Stephen Covey, in his famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People said,
“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are–or, as we are conditioned to see it.”
As this quote hints, we believe that what we see in the world and in ourselves are true. They are not. They are only our interpretations. They are the maps we’ve drawn with which to navigate our lives. In many ways, navigating with these maps works fine.
The problem is we cannot easily tell when our maps have stopped being good guidance for us.
The good news is that, with a little focus and a couple of good thinking tools, you can figure it out. You can notice when your map is broken then change your mind for better results.
To your continued success,
Mike
I like the idea, Mike … there are a lot of people wandering around like in a fog, more-or-less “lost” because they are following broken or distorted or inaccurate maps, maps that don’t reflect the true lay of the social landscape they live in. A very vivid image!
Jay
To me, that sense of “lost” equals running your life on mostly habit. Habit is a strong and useful tool. Look, for instance, at the Effectiveness Habits.
We normally don’t have a good way to know when a habit of thought or behavior no longer works for us.
Pushing ourselves or others to be more awake and aware of our broken maps has the perverse effect of keeping the broken maps in place. That’s because no one likes to be told what to do, ever. We don’t even like it when we try to make ourselves do something.
This is very big. What kind of world would we have if we worked with accurate maps?