Are You Aware of Your Ability to Change How You Perceive Your Life?

There is a lot of talk about the fact that, in order to have a better quality of life, it is important to change habits and adopt others more in line with what you want to achieve.

It is also often said that, to achieve this, we must be realistic and give up all kinds of activities for which we do not have a certain talent so as not to get frustrated again and again, so that we stick only to what fits our aptitudes. and innate predispositions.

These types of beliefs, although they are partly right, are incomplete and do not serve to understand the entire process of personal development. And they leave a fundamental variable out of the equation: the possibility of being aware of the limitations of the perspective we have adopted and of adjust our perception of reality to help us find our potential

Awareness is not the default option

Sometimes the unconscious part of the human psyche is spoken of as if it were a limitation, a defect of the human mind that we have no choice but to carry, trying to make it as unproblematic as possible. That is, it starts from the idea that the ideal human being is capable of being aware of as many things as possible. But this doesn’t make any sense.

The normal thing for any living being with a nervous system is that it is not aware of the things that happen in its body or around it. You only have to take a look at nature to realize that there are thousands of animal species that can barely be said to be conscious: In any case, they react to chemical signals and certain stimuli related to gravity, position or the magnetic fields of the planet Earth, and little else. And even with few exceptions, mammals do not usually have the capacity to be aware of their “I”, of their own individuality: for example, very few recognize themselves in a mirror.

This is because full consciousness, the fact of knowing ourselves as thinking beings located in a space and at a specific time, is a relatively recent capacity in the tree of species evolution. The normal thing is to exist without being able to assume that idea of ​​the “I” because the most important thing is to have other kinds of skills more oriented toward short-term survival.

But human beings have developed a degree of psychological complexity that allows us to access a very complete state of consciousness, and what is known as metacognition: we can think about our ability to think, and the fact that we think certain things and no others given a series of circumstances. For example, it is natural for us to turn off the television when we go to work, anticipating the fact that it may distract us.

This does not mean that most things continue to be outside our consciousness (we do not have infinite and immediate knowledge about everything that exists and happens in the Universe), but it is normal for this to be the case: Our ability to be conscious is limited because it only exists as a resource to help us learn from the environment and ourselves But although it is not unlimited consciousness, it is very flexible, and we can learn to reorganize and reorient it in practically any circumstance. Also to rethink what we thought we knew and to learn from our mistakes.

The value of stopping to think

At the beginning of this article I pointed out that to improve in some aspect of our lives, not everything involves simply adopting new habits. If by applying new habits to our daily lives we mean interacting with the environment and with others in a different way (for example, going for a run, making friends in a different way, etc.), these types of actions may be very good, but By themselves they do not have to give us anything positive And it is just as necessary as internalizing new routines when relating to the outside world and with those who populate it, it is internalizing new routines of managing and interpreting our thoughts and emotions.

If you only plan to reproduce new patterns of behavior such as going to the gym or learning to cook, you still need to go part of the way: ask yourself, for example, why those goals occurred to you and not others. Or stop and consider how you have analyzed your problems and needs to assume that these actions will make you happier or connect with what really motivates you.

Reframing your limitations

He also pointed out at the beginning that Not everything involves assuming that you have a series of defects and imperfections that will define what will make you happy While this idea is true in the abstract (for example, there is no point in thinking that you can only be a fulfilled person if you learn to fly like a bird), in practice it is often a drain on potential.

And although imperfections and defects are there, we tend to assume a very specific way of identifying and interpreting them: it is usually through social pressure that reaches us through the world of fashion, impossible beauty standards, of the exaltation of extreme youth, of what is conventionally popular, etc.

It is, deep down, a very rigid way of assuming what our limits are, a framework of interpretation that in no case belongs to us or fits with what interests us, but rather has been culturally imposed on us. That is why many people who believe they are rethinking their objectives and goals are actually doing the opposite of an exercise in mental flexibility and creativity to define what can make them happy: they limit themselves to reproducing expectations and roles transmitted through the television ads, blockbuster movies, the mirage of the life of influencers, etc. Despite being arbitrary, they are limits that many people internalize as if they had only occurred to them.

The key is flexibility when interpreting your life

In short, to set new goals and give up others, it is necessary not only to adopt new routines, but also learn to reinterpret what we took for granted about ourselves and the world around us What once seemed like an obstacle that we can never overcome can become something we can use to our advantage, and what once seemed like a key to happiness, when examined closely, can be revealed as a moral alibi that we use as an excuse. to not do what truly fulfills us.