The cages we live in – a journey into self discovery
13th June 2020
Have you ever considered that our comfort zones could, to a greater or lesser extent, be crating a prisons of our own making?
Think about a time when you wanted to do something but an uncomfortable feeling made you pull back.
We feel that way because of the mental cages that surround all aspects of our lives. We’ve created perimeters around every aspect of our lives that contain a picture of how things should be in order for us to feel safe and secure; these have been carefully curated over our lifetime by our parents, teachers, cultural references and general life experiences. But what if they only serve to keep us confined to a little space that was far from what we’re actually capable of?
Realising that we’re navigating life using these confined views of how things should be as our compass is not difficult, you only have to watch yourself carefully and you’ll notice that there are times when life just doesn’t behave like ‘it’s supposed to’ and you feel tightness in your chest and any other accompanying emotions ranging from feeling uncomfortable to full-on rage. It can be simple things like drivers driving too fast or too slow, or cutting you off, or bigger things like your spouse not doing things in the way you think they should. We’re bound by the rules we’ve laid out for ourselves, and the world had better behave accordingly or we’ll be upset.
So the big question then would be how to be overcomes these limiting mental models? How do we break free and start living a more spontaneous life?
One of the main requirements is being present; unless we’re in the moment, in order to realise what is happening, it’s impossible to identify the behaviour we’re trying to change. We simply go into automatic pilot and the script takes over what we may or may not have liked to do in a given situation.
Therefore, finding ways to remind ourselves to be present so we can notice the limitations that govern our lives is the first requirement towards freedom. After that, it’s a journey – it will take some considerable time to unravel all those years of mental conditioning.
Something that is extremely helpful is having a daily practice where we encourage ourselves to document where are our blind spots are and where exactly do we need to pay extra attention in our daily lives so we can make better choices is extremely helpful.