Within the Quadrant 2 part of your brain you will experience much pullback on your fantastic ideas, possibilities, opportunities and developments. The drive of the Quadrant 2 part is to keep you safe. To stop you from getting into danger. To stop you from jumping in over your depth.
Often fear and protection, however is disguised as reason and critical thinking and this is where you can sabotage yourself and your practice in a big way.
You have a huge range of ‘filters’ that you run when you observe and interact with the outside world. Every single experience you have ever had in your past has had a meaning put to it. The good, bad, right, wrong and all the grades in between all colour your view on the similar thing happening right now.
Amongst a myriad of ‘filters’ we commonly find the following components that you have within you as being hugely influential in how you interpret your current reality:
Language – Every word has meaning and power so use your words with extreme caution. We have banged on about this is previous articles so will not expand any further in this one.
Background – Your history of the events along your journey to now determines your viewpoint. Your todays gets judged by your yesterdays.
Education – Your teachers have had a significant influence on you for good or for bad. Where and how you were educated carves an indelible mark in your viewpoint. Seriously question whether the opinions you have are yours or your teachers.
Experience – Your actual experience has had little impact on your memory. You perception of the experience is what has given you the emotional charge to your memory. Your judgements, interpretations and representations are key to how you react to your experiences now.
Age – Your generational heritage relative to now plays a huge part in your viewpoint on now. There is a big difference between the Baby Boomer and Gen Z ranging from work ethic to relationship style and including every aspect of one’s life.
Culture – Your cultural heritage will have deeply ingrained memes and genetic memories encoded within you. These are likely to play out automatically when triggered in the present. This includes your religion, politics, ethnicity etc.
How often do you find yourself playing now as if it was the past? How often does your philosophy go unquestioned by your logical brain? How often do you apply resistance to a new idea just because its new? How often do you play for safety? How often do you have a rule for yourself eg “I can’t because….(fill in the reason) or how often do you have a label like “I’m no good at …”
The reasoning part of you is both important and helpful while at the same time is doing you harm. Wisdom is in knowing which way to play it at any point in time.
The challenge here is for you to be aware when you are identifying yourself as limited according to your reasons rather than selectively developing your reasons so that they produce results.
Mark
