Last week we talked about setting a direction for ourselves in a permaculture way. So now you know where you are going... How will you know you have succeeded? HOW ELSE?
Today is all about flexibility to maximize your happiness and success.
Recently I was coaching a round of a Mindvalley quest on the human diet and our relationship to food: WildFit. Often participants have a weight-loss goal in joining this program. Sometimes a very specific number of kilos.
During the program, invariably, other things happen as well. Their skin and hair get better, they feel less tired, some health issues get sorted... All sorts of improvements.
But many times they don't see it until I ask. It might sound surprising, because it seems obvious, right?
Part of it is because it is happening over time, gradually, so it is not until they pause to look back at before the challenge, that they realize that in the end, it makes a big difference.
More than anything, it is because while you're busy looking at the finger, you will never see the moon. If they have set one factor of checking for success, and it is not there, then it is a failure. The more specific your checklist gets, the more it turns into a recipe for failure.
Tunneled vision makes you blind
Tunneled vision often called tunnel vision, in medical terms, is the loss of peripheral vision with retention of central vision, resulting in a constricted circular tunnel-like field of vision. It happens naturally when we need to focus intensely, under stress. (and by the way, therefore a simple tip to de-stress is to intentionally soften your vision, using your peripheral vision)
A study shows that the change in vision affects the audition, too. So your attention bandwidth is narrowing, in all of your sensory inputs. We call it tunnel vision, but it is really tunnel senses. And our sensory input create our reality. We don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we perceive it.
This physical phenomena, happens in the mind too. Having a vision is great. It moves you forward, gives you both the motivation and the inspiration to create something in your life. The problems is when this vision becomes to narrow, into a tunnel vision It has many repercussions, and can happen in a few different ways. It always involves being blind to anything that is outside the tunnel.
For example, for the participants in the challenge I mentioned before, they want to change their relationship to food.
Let's say that Bob is one of them, and his only proof that this has happened, is having lost twenty kilos. He will easily ignore everything else that is happening in the direction of improving his relationship to food. He might even not take weight-loss in account so much, because: "Yeah, but it is only two kilos. I need to lose eighteen more.".
So if at the end of the challenge, let's say, as it usually happens, he has got rid of his cravings, has a better digestion, sleep and energy level, lost more kilos than ever... He might still feel like he failed, because his only target wasn't achieved.
Which, just in case you wonder, I don't let happen of course, because during the challenge I teach and train the participants to get out of tunnel vision.
In the worst scenario, tunnel vision turns into what Timothy Leary and then Robert Anton Wilson called a reality tunnel,
