Why we do not see new opportunities and how to change it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from the book "The 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos" on how to get rid of stereotypes and discover a whole world of possibilities.

We are always at the same time at the less desirable point A and move to point B, which we consider preferable, based on our explicit and hidden values. We are eternally confronted with the insufficiency of the world and we yearn to fix it. We can come up with new ways to fix and improve it, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even if we are temporarily satisfied, our curiosity does not fade away. We live within a framework that defines the present as insufficient and the future as invariably the best. And if we did not see everything in this way, then we would not do anything at all. We could not even see, because in order to see, we have to focus, and in order to focus, we must choose one of all things.

But we can see. We can even see what is not. We can imagine how to improve everything. We can construct new, imaginary worlds where problems that we did not even know about can emerge, and where we can work on them.

The advantages of this approach are obvious: we can change the world in such a way that the intolerable state of the present will be corrected in the future.

The disadvantages of this kind of foresight and creativity are chronic anxiety and discomfort. Since we are constantly opposing what is and what might have been, we must strive for what might have been. But our aspirations may be too high. Or too low. Or too chaotic. And so we fail and live in disappointment, even if others think that we are living well. How can we capitalize on our imagination, our ability to improve the future, without constantly belittling our current, insufficiently successful and valuable life?

The first step is probably some kind of inventory. […] Ask yourself: is there anything in your life or in your current situation that is in disarray that you could and are ready to put in order? Can you fix this one thing that humbly states that it needs fixing? Will you do it? Can you do it right now? […]

Set a goal: "By the end of the day, I want everything in my life to be just a little bit better than it was in the morning." Then ask yourself, “What can I do and what will I do to achieve this? What small reward do I want for this? " Then do what you decide to do, even if you are doing it badly. Treat yourself to this damn coffee as a reward. Maybe you will feel a little stupid from this, but continue anyway - tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and after the day after tomorrow.

Every day, your benchmark for comparisons will get better, and it's magical.

It's like compound interest. Do this for three years and your life will be completely different. Now you are striving for something higher. Now you want stars from the sky. The beam disappears from your eye and you learn to see. What you aim at determines what you see. This is worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

The dependence of the gaze on the goal, and at the same time on the value (after all, you aim at what you value) was vividly demonstrated by cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons more than 15 years ago. Simons investigated something called persistent inattention blindness. […]

First, he filmed a video with two teams of three. One team was in white shirts, the other in black. Both were clearly visible. Six people filled most of the screen, and their faces could be easily discerned. Each team had its own ball. The players hit it on the ground or threw it to each other, playing on a small patch near the elevators where the game was filmed.

As soon as Dan got the video, he showed it to the study participants. He asked them to count how many times the players in white shirts threw the ball to each other. After a few minutes, he asked the study participants for the number of passes. Most named the number 15. It was the correct answer. Most were very happy with this - cool, they passed the test! And then Dr. Simons asked, "Have you seen the gorilla?" - “What kind of joke? What kind of gorilla? " Simons said, “Well watch the video again. Just don't count this time."

And exactly - about a minute after the start of the match, a man in a gorilla suit enters the center of the field, dancing for several long seconds. He stops, then punches himself in the chest like the stereotype gorillas do. Right in the middle of the screen. Huge as my life. Painfully, irrefutably visible. But every second study participant did not notice it when they watched the video for the first time. […]

This is partly because vision is expensive, psychophysiologically and neurologically expensive.

A very small part of your retina is occupied by the fovea (fovea). This is the most central part of the eye with the highest resolution, used to distinguish between faces. Each of the few fossa cells requires 10,000 cells in the visual cortex to handle just the first part of a multi-step process called vision. Then each of these 10 thousand cells needs another 10 thousand to go to the second stage. […]

Therefore, when we look, we sort what we see. Most of our vision is peripheral, low resolution. We save the central fossa for the important things. We are channeling our high-resolution ability to see a few separate things that we aim at. And everything else, that is, almost everything, we leave in the shadows - unnoticed, blurred in the background. […]

It's not so scary when things are going well and when we get what we want (although under these circumstances it can be a problem: getting what we want now, we can become blind to higher goals). But this whole unnoticed world presents a terrible problem when we are in crisis and nothing comes out the way we would like it to. Plus, maybe there’s just too many things piled on us. Fortunately, this problem contains the seeds of a solution.

Because you ignored too much, there are many opportunities left where you did not even glance.

[…] Think about it this way. You see the world in your own idiosyncratic way. You use a toolbox to sort most of the things and take some for yourself. You've spent a lot of time creating these tools. They have become habitual. These are not just abstract thoughts. They are built into you, they guide you in the world. These are your deepest and often hidden and unconscious values. They have become part of your biological structure. They are alive. And they will not want to disappear, change, or die out. But sometimes their time passes; it's time to be born new. Therefore (however, not only because of this), going up, it is necessary to let go of something. […]

Perhaps your value structure needs a major overhaul. Perhaps what you want blinds you and prevents you from seeing what else you might have. Perhaps you are clinging to your desires in the present so tightly that you cannot see anything else, not even what you really need.

Imagine that you enviously think: "I would like a job like my boss." If your boss holds on to his seat stubbornly and competently, such thoughts will lead you to irritation, disgust, and you will feel unhappy. You can be aware of this. You think, “I am not happy. But I could be cured of this misfortune if I realized my ambitions. " Then you might think, “Wait a minute. Maybe I’m not happy because I don’t have my boss’s job. Maybe I'm unhappy because I can't stop wanting this job. " This does not mean that you can magically stop wanting this job, listen to yourself and change. You will not do that, you will not be able to change yourself so easily.

You have to dig deeper. You must change what has a deeper meaning to you.

So you might be thinking, “I don’t know what to do with this dull suffering. I cannot just give up my ambitions, otherwise I will have nowhere to go. But my longing for a job that I can't get is ineffective. " You can choose a different course. You can ask for a different plan - one that truly satisfies your desires and ambitions, while at the same time cleansing your life of the grief and resentment that you are currently influencing. You may be thinking, “I am implementing a different plan. I’ll try to want something that will make my life better, whatever it is, and I’ll start working on it right now. If it turns out that this means something other than the desire for a boss's job, I will accept it and move on."

Now you are on a completely different trajectory. Previously, what was right for you, desired, worthy of aspirations, was something narrow and specific. But you are stuck there, you are gripped and unhappy. And you let it go. You are making the necessary sacrifice, allowing a whole new world of opportunity, hidden from you by your past ambitions, to manifest itself.

Clinical psychologist and philosopher Jordan Peterson explores ideology, religion, totalitarian systems, personality and consciousness. In this book, he collected 12 truths that will help everyone to reconsider their life. The abundance of examples will keep you bored, and Peterson's deep thoughts will inspire change.