In this eye-opening TED talk, professional coach Michael Neill explains why we aren’t more awesome:
“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that is unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Here’s a bank robber running into this problem while trying to get away:
You’ll see that the frantic robber gets stuck in the bank trying to push outward when the doors only open inward. Sometimes, we’re so caught up in the predicament we’re in that we don’t open our minds. It can take an objective outside party — in this case, an oblivious elderly lady — to help free our minds to explore new possibilities.
Neill tells a story of how he went on a show to cure three people with spider phobia. During the dress rehearsal, these people were hooked up to EKG machines to measure their heart rates. The stage manager came in with a clear empty plastic box and told them that the box would be filled with spiders during the show. Immediately, the EKG machines displayed massive fluctuations in heart rates.
“We’re not afraid of what we think we’re afraid of. We’re afraid of what we think.” – Michael Neill
Neill gives examples where we believe something is real when it is not. He shares a fascinating analogy: the mind projects thoughts onto consciousness like a movie projector projects images onto a screen. Imagine a movie buff who believes the movies he watches are real. Silly, right? Well, we do this every day. We confuse our screen of consciousness with reality.
We think the best way to get what we want is to manipulate the external world. We think to ourselves, if I get a promotion, a bigger house, a significant other, then I’ll be happier. We don’t realize that our thoughts directly affect what we see. That even if we got these things from the external world, we won’t be happy unless we change our thought patterns.
Our thought patterns are like movie genres. Movie buffs tend to have favorite genres: comedy, horror, drama, etc. Those who favor a specific genre tend to experience more of the settings, themes, and moods of that genre. Similarly, we have our favorite genre(s) of thought patterns: joy, fear, sadness, anger, etc. These thought patterns color our conscious experience.
If we can realize that we’re watching the movie of our own lives, we can change the content of our conscious screens by changing our thoughts. As Neil concludes, “you are never more than a thought away from a whole new experience of being alive.”
Photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash
