Are you aware of your ability to change how you perceive your life?

There is much talk about how, in order to have a better quality of life, it is important to change habits and adopt others more in line with what you want to achieve.

It is also often said that, to achieve this, we must be realistic and give up all those kinds of activities for which we do not have a certain talent not to get frustrated over and over again, so that we stick only to what fits our aptitudes and predispositions innate.

This kind of beliefs, although they are partly right, are incomplete and do not serve to understand the globality of the process of personal development. And it is that they leave out of the equation a fundamental variable: the possibility of being aware of the limitations of the perspective that we have adopted and of adjust our perception of reality to help us find our potential.

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Awareness is not the default option

Sometimes the unconscious part of the human psyche is spoken of as if it were a limitation, a flaw in the human mind that we have no choice but to carry on our backs, trying to make it the least problematic possible. In other words, it starts from the idea that the ideal human being is capable of being aware of the more things the better. But this doesn't make any sense.

The normal thing in any living being with a nervous system is that it is not aware of the things that happen in its body or around it. You only have to take a look at nature to realize that there are thousands of animal species of which you can hardly say they are aware.: in any case, they react to chemical signals and to certain stimuli related to gravity, the position or the magnetic fields of the planet Earth, and little else. And even with few exceptions, mammals do not usually have the ability to be aware of their "I", of their own individuality: for example, very few recognize themselves in a mirror.

This is so because full consciousness, the fact of knowing that we are thinking beings and located in a space and at a certain moment, is a relatively recent capacity in the tree of consciousness. evolution of species. The normal thing is to exist without being able to assume that idea of ​​"I", because the most important thing is to have another class of skills more oriented to short-term survival.

But human beings have developed a degree of psychological complexity that allows us to access a very complete state of consciousness, and what is known as the metacognition: we can think about our ability to think, and the fact that we think some things and not others given a series of circumstances. For example, it is natural for us to turn off the television when we go to work, anticipating the fact that it can distract us.

This does not mean that most things continue to be outside of our consciousness (we do not have a knowledge infinite and immediate about everything that exists and happens in the Universe), but it is normal for this to be like this: our ability to be aware is limited because it only exists as a resource to help us learn from the environment and from ourselves. But although it is not an unlimited awareness, it is very flexible, and we can learn to reorganize and reorient it in almost any circumstance. Also to rethink what we thought we knew and to learn from our mistakes.

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The value of stopping to think

At the beginning of this article he pointed out that to improve some aspect of our lives, not everything happens simply by embracing new habits. If by applying new habits to our daily lives we understand how to interact with the environment and with others in a different way (for example, going for a run, making friends in another way, etc.), these kinds of actions can be very good, but by themselves they do not have to bring us something positive. And it is just as necessary as internalizing new routines when relating to the outside world and with those who populate it, is to internalize new routines of managing to interpret our thoughts and emotions.

If you only consider reproducing new patterns of behavior like going to the gym or learning to cook, it will continue missing part of the journey: ask yourself, for example, why these objectives have occurred to you and not others. Or stop to consider how you have analyzed your problems and needs to assume that these actions will make you happier or connect with what really motivates you.

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Reframing your limitations

He also pointed out at the beginning that not everything happens by assuming that you have a series of defects and imperfections that will define what will make you happy. While this idea is true in the abstract (for example, it doesn't make sense for you to think that you can only be a full person if you learn to fly like a bird), in practice it is usually a drain of potential.

And it is that although the imperfections and defects are there, we tend to assume a very determined way of identifying and interpreting them: it is usually through the social pressure that comes to us through the world of fashion, of the impossible canons of beauty, of the exaltation of extreme youth, of the conventionally popular, etc.

It is, deep down, a very rigid way of assuming what our limits are, a framework of interpretation that in no case belongs to us or fits with what interests us, but rather has been imposed on us culturally. That is why many people who believe they are rethinking their objectives and goals are actually doing the opposite of an exercise in mental flexibility and creativity to define what that can make them happy: they limit themselves to reproducing expectations and roles transmitted through television commercials, blockbuster movies, the mirage of the life of influencers, etc. Despite being arbitrary, they are limits that many people internalize as if they had only occurred to them.

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The key is flexibility when interpreting your life

In short, to set ourselves new goals and give up others, it is necessary not only to adopt new routines, but also learning to reinterpret what we took for granted about ourselves and the world around us. What one day seemed like an obstacle that we can never overcome can become something that we can use to our advantage, and what we used to seemed like a key to happiness, examined closely, it can be revealed as a moral alibi that we use as an excuse not to do what we really want to do. full.