Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [8]
Our worlds are very different but often we do not realise that. We see things in different ways. No two people’s views of an event are the same. Witnesses of the same crime frequently, to the frustration of police officers, give completely different versions of what ‘happened’. Our perspective feels as if it is the objective world. We need to be self-responsible so we can determine and shape the narrative we live our own life by. If we believe that gods and demons can shape it, or that luck and fate will intervene, then it will be so. I have tried to live my life by taking charge of what happens, even though sometimes I have been at best a poor director, and at other times an apparent victim of circumstance, such as an impoverished childhood. Yes, events have sometimes seemed to conspire against me, for example, losing both my parents early in life, but I have still lived with the belief that I alone was responsible for how things turned out. If it is a false belief, I cannot see that it is a harmful one. In fact, I have probably never actually been a victim of circumstance, however it seemed at the time – I have been a victim only of myself and my level of self-responsibility.
So the most important person to convince is yourself.
9. We are all habit machines
Our brains are hard-wired to develop habits. Habits and the brain’s autopilot facility save energy. The brain is only 2 per cent of our body weight but consumes 20 per cent of our energy resources. So it is expensive to run in terms of resources and operates on an efficiency principle. It will always take shortcuts based on what it already knows or has done before. That is just a natural part of the human condition and is true of us all. Of course our habits have evolved because they are efficient in helping us to size up the world, to warn us of danger and to allow us to make decisions without effort. Yet we can operate consciously too. We do not have to be habit-driven all the time. But often people fall back on using their habits instead of examining their decisions and behaviours to see if they are optimal. That leads them into all kinds of difficulties.
In fact we are much more habitual than we would like to believe. To develop, to get the most from life, to be happy and fulfilled, to be fully rounded human beings, we need to examine not only how habitual we are, but which habits we have acquired. Because we see the world through these habits. They distort, warp, disguise and shape what we think and see. We see things from only our narrow perspective and behave accordingly. Much may be gained by realising that we have shaped our own worlds with the constraints of these habits and that things could be very different. We tend to make the world much smaller than it can be. That is why different people see different things in the same situation. That is why what appears to be so obvious and objective to us is often perceived so differently by another. That is why we have conflicts, both within ourselves and with others. Our habits filter the world; they don’t just change how we behave in it.
10. Habits come in many forms
Every second the senses are bombarded with ten to twelve million bits of information to process. We can only process about fifty bits of information a second. Hence the need to automatise much of the process and to develop habits in many forms.
Habits of perception make sense of the world for us and organise incoming information quickly and efficiently. The brain is adept at sense-making. It can fill in gaps and recognise patterns using only limited perceptual information. Habits of thinking are mental shortcuts. We can use intelligent guesswork without putting in too much mental effort. Rules of thumb can be drawn from our experience and we can quickly categorise something that’s new on the basis of our stored knowledge.
Habits of attitude mean we do not need to contemplate the nuances