I had dug out an old Daily Reminder to share with somebody, all about how we perceive the whole of life through the veil of our perceptions.
It's called ‘Goggles’ and it's such a simple, powerful metaphor for how the mind works, I recommend that if you haven't read it in a while (like me), you do so now:
Giles P Croft
Good, isn't it?
Thing is, in order to keep the Daily Reminders bitesized for you, I sometimes have to cut an idea short, and upon re-reading, this one I felt was missing a crucial insight.
I got to the bit about ‘seeing red’ and found myself metaphorically jumping up and down, waving my hand in the air, saying,
“Our goggles determine our behaviour, too!”
Why?
Because of this:
This means that whichever of those filters we're projecting our ‘reality’ through in that very moment, we will behave accordingly. We don't have any control over this – it just happens.
So to go back to the three examples I gave in that previous Daily Reminder:
- If we’ve got our overwhelm goggles on, we'll be crippled by the weight of all there is to do, and we'll procrastinate
- If we’ve got our angry goggles on, the first person who has the misfortune to bring their own mind-body into our (lack of) presence is going to get yelled at, irrespective of how kind or loving they're being
- If we’ve got our grateful goggles on, we'll be able to lift even the most dismayed of fellow humans out of a funk, because even low moods are a manifestation of life-wisdom!
These are all examples of temporary beliefs. A particular story that we're operating out of, that determines everything else, downstream of it.
It's why there's no point in trying to change your behaviours themselves. Because if you fail to tackle the underlying belief, or at the very least appreciate that all your behaviour stems from belief/goggles/perspective/mood/thought… then nothing will change.
(It's like that metaphor of hoiking a steady flow of people out of a river. You could do that for the rest of your life, but it's much better to go upstream and find out why they're falling in, in the first place!)
So an unusual practical tip for you, on a Sunday.
Next time you find yourself ‘behaving badly’ just take the briefest of moments to wonder if it could be coming from the kind of goggles you're wearing, in that moment.
🤔
You don't even need to find an answer (minds love a quiz!) – I think the very act of curiosity itself gives us the opportunity to get a little bit of distance from the behaviour… and that's probably enough.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft