The 3 Most Important Things I’ve Learned.

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

 

1. We each create our own reality. (Arthur C. Clarke)

I recall first reading this, and contemplating it for at least three decades. It took that much time holding this template against real life to verify its truth. I can say with absolute certainty that Arthur C. Clarke’s omniscient observation is irrevocably true. In fact, it is one of life’s few absolutes.

Whether you believe in God, karma, or are an atheist your beliefs shape your reality with enormous might and inertia. What you believe in the abstract manifests in the physical through your decisions.

One person sees lights in the sky at night. They believe it is a star, and go on to study astronomy. Another person sees the same light, believes it is a UFO and latter attends a convention for UFO witnesses. A third believes the light is a communications satellite and goes on to study space exploration. A fourth person sees the light and believes this is the Star of Bethlehem and becomes a devout religious follower.

Each person saw the same light. But each person created a different reality from it, because based on our interpretation of the stimulus around us we each create our own reality.

Understanding this key concept helps us make sense of a world that often seems mad and chaotic. Everyone is exposed to like stimulus, but against the template of their beliefs, fears and aspirations, they craft an often wildly different reality. When these realities fail to coincide, or threaten each other, there is conflict.

If you can value and respect the realities that others create, then we can live in harmony and tolerance. The key thing is that these realities are not imagined or conjured, they are solid and material, people behave around them, and they are often unmalleable. Hence the need to accommodate each other’s reality to the degree necessary to coexist.

There is a dark side to this fact though. The reality of an ISIL terrorist, for example, is that anyone with beliefs other than theirs must be eliminated. There is no room for any other set of ideas, and their own ideas are the only ones that are real. When a set of ideas or realities leaves a person’s own sphere of influence and harms or limits another person’s reality it’s important to moderate that reality. That is how realities collide in conflict. History has shown us realities, even conflicting ones, can be moderated to coexist constructively, but the process has often resulted in massive tragedy. This reality is one we collectively continue to create and re-create.

 

2. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. (Steven Covey) 

As our earth becomes more crowded, resources become scarcer. Communication has become faster and more accessible. The volume of human interaction has gone up. It is a planet increasingly engaged in a conversation with more and more voices getting collectively louder and louder. The only way to be heard above the din of shouting is to begin in the silence of listening.

One of mans’ greatest desires is to be heard. By listening, we fulfill that need. But there is a vast difference between listening and waiting to be heard. Listening is a deeply personal experience that challenges us to hold new ideas against what we believe in the risk of learning that we must change ourselves. Real listening is a deeply humbling experience.

While listening and then thinking takes an enormous amount of cognitive energy it is also deeply exhilarating. Our lives take on new colors, new dimensions, and hurtle forward into an infinite realm of possibilities when we listen.

Listening with the sincere motive of understanding is the gateway to all of life’s experiences. Once you truly attempt to understand something before you wish to be understood the volume of your character and wisdom increases. Listening is like water flowing into an ocean, it is ever expanding, ever renewing and all powerful.

3. Between stimulus and response is our greatest freedom, choice. (Viktor Frankl)

Sometimes you believe you have no choice. The liberty of choice is always present between an event and an outcome. In that space is our greatest power, the power to decide.

There are times when the material outcomes of our choices are bad. You chose not to work for a bad boss, quit your job, so food is hard to come by. But suddenly you encounter networks of ways to get the food you need. So, you survive, and you do so on your own terms. The outcome of this choice is that you have preserved your personal options. You have the day to search for a new job, and you used resources to get the food you need to sustain your search. This is already a massive step forward compared to living under the oppression of a bad boss who removes your greatest personal freedom, even if you have to be hungry for a few days to exercise this power.

Millions of people have sacrificed themselves for this basic human principle, and probably billions more wish they had the personal resolve to use their power of choice, but they are too afraid. If there is one thing that separates people who live in abundance from those who live in despair, it is the courage to preserve choice.

Choice is expensive and often is not conspicuously easy to make even after it is earned. But it is the most precious part of the human condition, the ability to use our massive brains to decide our destiny against any condition.

 

 

 

 

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