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What You Know May Be Killing You by Amie J. Devero Most of us have dreams, goals and secret aims that we would love to fulfill. It might be a particular trip, to own a business, to build something, create something, learn a language or even to climb a mountain. Some of these ideas came to us when we were children or as we grew up, and some may be secret because we are embarrassed to be thought of as dreamers. As we’ve aged we’ve come to regard them more like fantasies than like plans or realistic goals. While aging has many benefits—the growth in experience, capacity, expertise and knowledge—it also has some notable disadvantages. The disadvantages have less to do with the loss of pure physical vitality, and more to do with the erosion of our ability to believe in what is possible. That’s one of the most tragic aspects of aging and becoming “wiser”. Cynics call this aspect of maturity “realism”. But this realism is another word for resignation, a loss of the ability to believe that anything beyond the predictable can ever happen. Sadly, in life, most of us live down to our own expectations. Our ability to fulfill our hopes and dreams is only as great as our capacity to expand our notions of what is possible, and to continue to have a youthful belief that the future can bring anything, if we are willing to generate it. We see this limitation in our roles within our families, relationships and workplaces. How many times have you heard yourself predict what your husband, wife or colleague is about to say? That sense of “knowing” someone so well that you can predict their behavior is another way of describing contempt and disrespect. That may sound harsh, but whenever a new person comes into your life, they come with an unlimited amount of possibility attached to them. That’s because you haven’t yet formed a point of view – and in the absence of “knowing” them, they can provide anything and turn out to be any way. That unlimited potential lasts only seconds, because we are quick to form opinions and those opinions become the fixed way we perceive someone. Once we have an idea of how a person is or what they are like, it’s hard for us to see them in any other way. So mostly, when we think we know what someone is about to say or do, they do exactly that. You see, other people live down to our expectations just as we do ourselves. That way of considering other people is a form of contempt because it brings with it the expectation of disappointment. Consider a scenario in which a father-in-law openly loathes the son-in-law he believes with never amount to anything – or the wife who knows that her husband will never remember to take out the trash. This negative sort of “premonition” starts seemingly innocence, but ultimately grows to become a poison that kills love and destroys the possibility of growth and breakthroughs. It is disrespectful because it assumes that those we have in our lives will tend toward their lowest level of performance rather than rise to their greatest. If you were a coach of a swim team and your best swimmer was about to race, you would treat him with the expectation that he would win – maybe even break a record. That is respect. If you scorned his effort and thought to yourself that he would be lucky to come in third, you would be disrespecting him as an athlete and as a member of the team; especially if you held the role of coach. Aren’t those we love and work with worthy of at least the level of championing and respect that we would give a child on a team we coach? We bring this kind of knowledge and resignation to every moment of life. And those same limitations are extended to include everyone we interact with and everyone we love. Sadly, we don’t confine this form of limiting thinking only to others. The area in which we tend to have the greatest level of resignation is in how we see ourselves and our own power to bring about change or to create what has never been before. If we begin by challenging those notions, we start to dismantle the walls that keep life predictable, uninspired and that relegate our greatest desires to the realm of unrealistic fantasy. Like any bad habit, changing the thinking that keeps us small is simple – but it is not easy. The behavior and thought patterns are automatic. We don’t truly want to kill the possibility of joy and fulfillment, and if we knew we were doing it we would want to stop it. But we can’t help ourselves. Before we even think about what we are thinking, the thoughts that poison our lives and relationships are already making our decisions for us. Those thoughts decide how we listen, how we react, what we plan, what we expect and the degree to which we extend ourselves into the unfamiliar. So before we can even begin to create anything new, we have to train ourselves to notice what is already there. This same discipline is what allows athletes to improve and addicts to quit using. For example, in order for a swimmer to improve his technique, he first has to be able to feel what he is already doing and how it is limiting his speed or adding to his drag. When a smoker tries to quit, he will begin to notice all the different moments that cue him to have a cigarette. At first, these moments are overwhelmingly frequent – and that frequency is often a shocking realization to a smoker. The same is true as we try to change our way of perceiving and thinking about life and the people we know. This is a process that never ends. But to start just requires beginning to notice all the ways that our thoughts limit what is possible. Notice in conversations how frequently you say (or think), “yeah, but…”. As we all know, “yeah, but” is another way of saying “no, it’s not so”. It kills possibility. Begin to notice your internal expectation of others to behave a certain way. We listen to a constant litany of criticism within our minds. In the office, we feign friendliness while having incredibly disrespectful (but silent) comments about our colleagues and bosses. On the surface this may seem harmless. But those thoughts dictate our ability to work together, collaborate, generate new ideas and create an enlivened work environment. Start taking notice of those kinds of thoughts. Most importantly, resurrect your dreams and goals. Write them down and begin to deal with your own thoughts about what is ‘realistic”. The lack of realism isn’t a function of how possible your dreams are or of the material circumstances in your life. The limitation is in your ability to see them as possible. Once you can quiet your mind of the possibility-killing chatter, you will find that lots of hopes you had abandoned resurrect themselves. As long as you believe they are impossible dreams, you will not waste energy on making them real, after all that would be completely irrational. So that prediction of impossibility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: You think they’re unrealistic so you don’t do anything about them – and your lack of action guarantees that you get no closer to fulfilling them. To think differently requires a discipline that constantly questions our internal monologue, the ever-present voice of resignation. By lifting the lid on what we see is possible for ourselves and others, life transforms. The people in our lives will rise to the level of our aspirations once we stop holding them down to their lowest level of performance by subjecting them to our certainty about them. When that happens, and we learn to open ourselves to what is possible instead of arguing for what is not, our dreams become goals and our lives orientate themselves toward fulfilling them. Those two changes make a world of difference, because the people who ought to be championing our greatest possible lives become more than nagging whispers of discouragement – they become our fans and catalysts, as we become theirs. Most importantly, we recapture the wonder that we relinquished as we grew up. With the power of childlike possibility available to us, our adult-like knowledge and skills can be used to create extraordinary lives, careers and relationships. ### Amie Devero is the author of Powered by Principle, a values-based approach to business and life. http://amiedevero.com/ Article Source: www.nolimitsforme.com |
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