Limping Shrink Rule 2: Removing our personal blinkers one dis at a time

    From wikimedia commons GGF Race 5.jpg                                                                            

We all go around seeing only the world we can see through our personal blinkers, right?

Our personal preferences

Each of us has a preferred way of looking at the world. For me it's often from the point of view of 'What are the most useful and ethically sound rules for my own behaviour?' For someone else it might be 'What does this group of people need to be happy?' or 'How can I act right now to make the thing happen in the most efficient way possible?', 'I must puzzle out the truth wherever it takes me' or 'What happens if I do this?

Our personal blinkers

All of these are good, healthy and useful ways of approaching the world. But they all have an accompanying perspective that we are blind to. So for me that might be that playfulness creates stronger relationships than sincerity alone. And for other people it might be that if their efficiency isn't about what they personally value it will be ultimately unsatisfying, or that the truth is only satisfying if you can help others understand it, or that organisation allows you to build on previous things.

Where we all fall down is when we don't see that there are other ways of being, other parts of ourselves that we are ignoring or denigrating to our own detriment. This is usual for humans.

Using our blinkers in personal development

And learning to see the things we are blind to is a very helpful way of increasing our options in response to events, increasing our acceptance of both ourselves and other people, and increasing our satisfaction with our lives. Jung talked about embracing our shadow, Enneagram experts about dis-identifying with our ego, the Big Five test shows you what you need to work on. But this idea of our blindness is as old as humanity itself. You only have to look at your own family to see that we are all blind in one way or another. (Yes, you too!)

It’s not just that we can’t see the rest of ourselves completely, but that we dismiss or envy the attributes of other people that don’t fit into our preferred lane. The blinkers we wear to help us stay on the racetrack stop us from seeing and appreciating the lush pasture on one side and the magnificent stallion on the other. The blinkers are there so we are not distracted from the race our preference entered us into, not for our ultimate happiness. We can be the best steeplechaser in the world, but we will still be restricted by the rails unless we can take the blinking blinkers off.

But if we're blind to them, how can we use them?

Luckily, the irony god has created us to easily know when we are acting on our blinkers. All we have to do is notice when we are thinking bad things about other people. Those bad things we think are a flashing neon signpost to the things we are blind to.

Limping Shrink Rule 2: If we're excluding another person from the human race, we'll be excluding part of ourselves too.

So if I'm in the 'useful good' race myself, then I can see my blindspots in for example my impatience with layers of abstraction that aren’t immediately useful in the real world and my seeing spontaneous playfulness as something other people do to delay the real work. Noticing that abstract thought, excitement and fun are in fact welcome and necessary to me allows me to start enjoying them in others and in myself too. Even while I’m stuck between the rails of my to do list.

So what are your envy and dismissal telling you?

What could you learn from the people you dislike most?