I was thinking today about how each of us have a perception in our heads of who we are, of what kind of man we are. I have spoke many times on this show about the importance of knowing ourself well so that this perception of self is as accurate as possible.
I have also said on many occasions that perception is reality. The things we perceive are what is real to us. That’s important, because if we perceive that we are good, kind, strong, brave, intelligent men…then we are much more likely to live into that reality.
One of the things, perhaps the biggest thing that informs our perception of self, is our memories. All of our memories, both good and bad are what come together in our brains to form the tapestry of our existence.
We rely on memories way more often than we realize. A bad memory might cause us to avoid a certain situation, while a good memory might cause us to seeks out situations where we can replicate that memory.
When confronted with a new situation, without us even realizing it, our brains scan our memory banks for anything that is similar, for anything that might help us navigate this new situation.
If it is a really brand new situation our brains might not come up with anything that helps us…but we forge on ahead anyway, and then we create a brand new memory that will aid us in the future.
Nestled in our brains alongside but independent of our memories…is our intellect. Our conscious reasoning area. Sometimes these two areas are in conflict. Sometimes our intellect doesn’t allow our memories to work as well as they should.
We humans have a special knack for letting bad memories fade into obscurity while at the same time embellishing good memories into things that didn’t really happen that way. My personal theory is that this only happens when we allow it to.
It’s a type of mental laziness that we have all been guilty of at one time or another. We want to believe amazing things about ourselves, it feels good, so we allow our intellect to bend memories into our favor. After a while, that becomes our new reality…our new, inaccurate reality.
Likewise, we might take a bad memory, something we are ashamed of or something that was painful, things that make our intellect uncomfortable. Then our intellect, through justification and excuse, will cause us to forgive this bad act, or make it so that it becomes irrelevant; it wasn’t our fault, someone else made me do that, etc.
Sometimes this is beneficial. For example if I had a 100% accurate memory of the pain I felt when my finger got smashed in the Army…it would be a very uncomfortable memory. As it is…I just remember that it hurt really bad.
The same is true with the pain of grief, like when someone we love dies....
