BLINDERS

May 14th, 2019

We give horses a special headgear that narrows their sight and prevents them from knowing what’s next to them and behind them.  The reason being is that horses would freak out otherwise when a car came up to pass them.  Blinders shut off all this information.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but ignorance certainly creates a worthy sense of calm.

It’s a literal example of what our mindset often accomplishes for our view of the world. 

We need only remember a time when reality gave us a cold hard slap in the face to realize that this is always the case to some degree.

A wake-up call from reality is like tearing the blinders off of our mindset.  The change is jarring, much like if we tore the blinders off of a horse while it was in city traffic.

The point isn’t to remind one’s self of times when reality unceremoniously humbled our understandings, but to keep in mind that we probably always wear some kind of blinder and that the future holds every possibility that such a blinder might get ripped off.

Sticking to plans that should be abandoned is the easiest example of seeing this work to our detriment.  When we are so set on an idea and can so clearly see it flourishing in the world that we cease to see the plain facts that it’s not working out, we have a kind of blinder affixed to our mindset.  As we save the horse from it’s own fear, we try to keep our own fear at bay by ignoring important feedback.  But unlike the horse which generally remains safer with such blinders, we only dig our own hole a little deeper.  The sunk-cost fallacy is most likely a contributing factor to these blinders, but in many cases it may simply be a love affair with our own conception of the world.  Such conceptions, if not reliable maps of the real world, belong in the world of fiction.  Otherwise, our only love affair should be with the feedback that we can receive on a day to day basis.

If we become enamored of the process, than the destination ceases to be so much of a concern, and furthermore, when we’ve achieved that destination and have a mind for some new endeavor, our love of the process transfers effortlessly.

The first step that we must take to get closer to the process is to search out any spots in our mindset where we may have attached blinders and rip them off.  Only then can we take in the valuable feedback that the process is readily able to give.