The world is shaped from the inside out

In the last training course facilitated by me (called FlowFactor - training course for sustainable team management, you can read more about it here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/.../szilard-marton...) I learned, re-learned and remembered a couple of lessons, and these lessons had a deep impact on me during the program. I managed to compress them into 15 insights. I will share them here one by one. WARNING! It might be a long read - I understand if it is too long for you, and I appreciate it if you choose to read it fully. I will be grateful if once you have read the text, you will share your insights with me, either as a comment or by DM-ing me. Thank you for your care.

Insight number 2: The world is shaped from the inside out.

Although the FlowFactor training course was designed to be a professional development course, it was also designed to challenge the perception of the participants regarding the world as they know it. One of the participants was very triggered by the thought of being judged. Another participant believed that being outdoors is an inconvenience that should be avoided. Yet another participant believed that she was wronged many times by the group, and she made sure to point it out to the group in a quite dramatic manner. More people expected that the program would be changed whenever there was something inconvenient popping up.

In these people there was also a huge resistance - but about this a bit later, another time.

What they all experienced during the program was that the world was mirroring something that was alive inside them. Or, to be more precise: some phenomena made them think that they recognized a pattern in their surrounding that amplified one or more of their fears.

We have a brain that excels in data & pattern recognition. We constantly want to “read” each other’s mind by reading the body language, the facial reactions, the alternations in voice, proximity, and many other key behavioural factors of other people. This is all good until we actually believe that “we can read another person”. When our brain processes this huge amount of visual, auditory and other types of data, it doesn’t process the data in real-time.?

The brain has created an information indexing system, and based on that it labels the data segments already. These labels can be anything from neutral to funny, from harmless to dangerous, from uninteresting to a label that triggers strong emotional and intellectual reactions based on a childhood memory.

This label shortcut system works well, except when it doesn’t. This system is designed to be efficient, not perfect, so it is biased. The bias is based on our internal map of reality. If we believe that the world is a safe place, for example, our brain labels with high probability more data as potentially safe, than when we believe that the world is a dangerous place, a place that is there to get us.

Basically what I am saying is that our perception of reality is a story, in which we are the protagonists. We are the heroes of our story, and we go on endeavours, slaying dragons, and rescuing damsels in distress while becoming more of who we really can be. This is my hypothesis, but probably somebody has proven it already. However, if this is true then there is one more important question to be asked: What story is worth to be told?

Since we are the heroes of our own story, we can choose to rewrite it, as many times as we want. We can choose to trust the world, to see opportunities, where we only saw obstacles, to ride that momentum with actions that eliberate us and transcend us from where we are to where we potentially can end up being.?

That one participant, who was triggered by the thought of being judged became playful with judgement (in the beginning I often said to her # nojudgement, then she started to tease me joyfully with #judgement shoutouts). The other one, who believed that being outdoors is an inconvenience that should be avoided enjoyed hiking in the pouring rain, having a real connection in the process with her colleagues by getting soaking wet together. The participant, who believed that she was wronged many times by the group became more trusting, finding her more balanced place in the group using her voice and her silence consciously. Even the people who expected that the program would be changed whenever there will be something inconvenient popped up just rolled with the inconveniences that popped up during the program - some by design, some by unfortunate circumstances.

What story would you like to share through your life? What story is worth to be shared with the world?