Tag: lenses

What part does culture play in you becoming you?

Culture is the culmination of the Social Norms we learn  and perpetuate, as we develop and grow within a Society.

  • My Culture – Your Culture – Our Culture – Their Culture
  • We are Social animals, tribal and we grow up in a Culture, created by those already there.
  • We are taught beliefs about reality by those in the Culture. Those beliefs, including those that become unconscious biases, become the lenses, through which we perceive reality.
  • My Reality – Your Reality – Our Reality – Their Reality.
  • No!
  • My representation of Reality – Your representation of Reality – Our representation of Reality – Their representation of Reality.
  • No-one knows reality, we know only, our REPRESENTATIONS of Reality

Those representations of course, become our Truth.

Ahh Truth, what is that again?

        Click here to see:- truth define document

Culture does in a major way then, through what we are taught within it, influence how we each represent reality.

Culture~ exists wherever human beings come together, bounded by a continent, a country, a city, a district,  a village, a pub, a club, a political party, an organisation / workplace, a spiritual way of being, a religion, a church, a school, a University, a Team etc.

A major driver of how it comes about, is our social brain. 

We are primarily social animals, herding, tribal creatures, wired with a strong desire to fit in. (Proven perhaps by the few who do not🤪)

Do we really desire to fit in?

Do we really need to conform?

 

We learn cultural norms from others.

The norms are laid down within us as, patterns of thinking, values / beliefs (lenses through which we perceive reality and consequently build our representations of it) and patterns of behaviour (habits), triggered by cues present in  any given context e.g. the Brit’s propensity to queue.

Those beliefs that we learn of course, impact the representation of the reality we live in.

  • Can you change the beliefs you learned from your culture / background / upbringing?
  • What happens to your representation of reality, when you change the beliefs / lenses you learned?
  • Did you ever find changing your beliefs  / lenses, changed who you socialised with?
  • Did you ever find  changing your environment e.g new job, new locale, caused  you to change behaviour, in order to fit in with the new culture?
  • What about beliefs, any change?

What is the impact, of my beliefs on my reality?

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.  

 Thomas Fuller

How do your beliefs impact the  perception you hold about reality?

  • Little or not at all?
  • They have some effect?
  • High?
  • Total. My beliefs absolutely define how the reality of my life is, the good aspects, the not quite so good and the most challenging?

Think again about the journey of you becoming you.

We are Born

We begin to learn and form beliefs about  reality, from direct experience and from what the big people around us teach us to believe. We are very trusting of the big people😯😀

We learn to believe in our beliefs as they help us build a representation of reality.

We learn to trust that representation of reality, because it “works”. We look through the lenses of our beliefs and “see that it is so” and then learn of course, “I am right” and now defend our representation of reality, as if our very life is threatened.

 

 

 

What we ‘see’, becomes true for us, our truth.

We form Points of View, views from a Point!

We sense threat when others disagree with our view on reality (because our representation is, you know, actually real-‘Duh’ 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️)

Our Amygdala floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and we are in ‘fight-flight-freeze acting as if our very life is in real danger  with our mature thinking, Prefrontal Cortex  shut down! 😖

As this happens over and over again, we are learning that if people disagree with us, we need to win the ‘battle’, otherwise the emotion, the feelings we get in our body, will not be good🤯. The brain learns by repetition and this reinforces the belief ‘I am right.’

So it is, that we become defined, not by the reality that is ‘out there’, rather we are defined by what we believe, what our lenses, perceive…

It is that perception and our consequent representation, which becomes true for us.

Thus we become what we believe, e.g. Needing to be perfect, not good enough, better than everybody else, confident, not confident, able to listen, not able to listen, bullied, bullying, nervous, certain, over-analysing, taking everything personally, etc etc.

  • Unless?
  • Unless what?

We change our mindset about changing beliefs?

Change your beliefs – Change your life

A question to ask yourself

Is your mind your master? Or Are you the master of your mind?  

 

The Arc of Uncertainty

 

What is this all about?

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition that impels us to unfold our powers.” Erich Fromm

In my thinking about certainty and the brain,  it has become clear to me, that :-

  • We are born – we are uncertain
  • We learn – we become certain
  • We learn – we become uncertain again

In other words as we learn, we become certain, about what we learn, for example, Santa Claus 🙂 ….and then no Santa Claus 🙁 then as parents 🙂

The brain uses what it learns to  predict, to be ‘certain’ about what will happen in reality and then how to deal with that.  See diagram below

As the diagram says, prediction is a primary function of the brain, using the experience it has built up, the Beliefs / Lenses it has laid down, about how to deal with reality.

Because our brain really does like to be certain and does not like being uncertain, it can become quite stubborn, in clinging on to its beliefs  , as you may recognise,when you are holding on to your Point of View as if your very life depended on you being right 🙂

You may notice, that there are many of us who are certain about many things, triggering this quote, “Beware the man who is certain, he is the cause of all the problems in  the world!”

If we reach (not all of us do), the second ‘age of uncertainty’ on the Arc, then we are ‘OK’ at that time, with being uncertain, exploring, learning and realising most of our ‘learned certainty’ before, was an illusion 🙂

Reality will do what it does, (it is what it is). You may believe you can control it (the illusion). You cannot.

The next time you react emotionally, see if you can notice who or what, you are trying to control? (Because you were ‘certain’ reality would do as you had predicted / believed it would and there was a mismatch)

As human beings, one of the main ways we stress, is by setting an expectation (prediction) that then, is not met 🙂

The level to which we stress, is directly proportional to the attachment we have to the outcome being the way we predicted 🙂

If you detect “should, must, have to, ought to,” in a sentence somewhere, then there will be levels of stress, when reality does what it does and outcomes do not match the expectations / predictions,  made by your brain

  • Where are you on the Arc?
  • How certain are you of that answer?
  • What are you currently trying to control in reality, that is stressing you?
  • What would it mean, for you, if your beliefs were just that, beliefs?
  • What changed (needs to change) in you, for you to be ok with reality being uncertain?

Is your Mind your Master? or Are You the Master of your Mind?

Why am I asking the question about who is the Master; You or your Mind?

Because it is important. Our brain is absolutely amazing at learning, think of all the patterns laid down in a lifetime, all those things that  can just be done automatically now, without consciously paying attention. Dressing, eating, washing,  walking, running,  riding a bike, balancing, swimming, changing gear in a car, speaking, reading, understanding language, knitting, sewing, playing an instrument, writing, etc. This is incredibly efficient and it is why the brain learns patterns, because to learn means you need to pay conscious attention and that takes energy, glucose. The brain uses  about 20% of the body’s energy supply, so the more it can do without constantly paying attention the better 🙂

Beliefs and the Child Brain

So what? Well, as per the slide above, there are a lot of things the brain learns as  a child, shoulds, musts, have tos, ought tos, for example that may, or may not, be helpful in later adult life. We learn beliefs about ourselves, for example “I’m not good enough! Be Perfect, Please everybody.” Of course if you hold a belief (A lens through which you perceive reality) you will always  have evidence to back it up, because I am right in this belief  and ‘look, see the evidence’ about me being not good enough! Hence low self esteem is perpetuated until!

Until what? Until you wake up and begin to think about this belief, to observe it. See it for what it really is:-

  • Something you learned
  • Taught to you by others
  • Useful at the time of learning, because it kept you safe

By doing this you begin the journey to becoming the master of your mind

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato – Socrates)

At this point, just begin to notice the beliefs. I will cover how to begin a process of change in a later post called “Feel the Fear and do it anyway”

  • What beliefs (lenses) have you formed about yourself? (Write them down) Look at them and really think about:-
  • When you learned them?
  • Where you learned them? From whom? (Note this may not be easy to do. It is worth it)
  • Are they useful now?

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