This bowl of chili is a great example of how the mind can be a fantastic tool for change. As we continue to live on autopilot, we might want to take a cue from the bowl of chili to begin to think about change more.
The bowl of chili scene in the latest episode of The Walking Dead looks as fun as ever. In fact, the game is so good that I actually thought the main character was going to say, “I’m on autopilot, I can’t stop.” Instead he said, “It’s cool to be on autopilot.
It makes sense, of course. If we’re going to be on autopilot, we’re going to need to keep our minds open. It’s not a bad thing, just a different perspective.
The point here is that we are all on autopilot. We are all living in our own little time loops. We’re trying to figure out how to make our lives better, but we’re not actually trying to do it. We’re just going through the motions that we know that we need to do to make it better.
That’s why we need to stop and think about what we are doing. A lot of the time we are just doing what we know is good for us. Were just doing what we know is right for us. We know that we need to exercise some self-awareness so we know what is going on. Most of the time we just do what we think we are supposed to do. We don’t have to stop and think about what we are doing.
If you can get past the self-awareness part you will be much more aware of what you are doing. That’s because self-awareness is a skill that we can train and develop. But when we do something we are not actually sure we are doing, we are just doing it because we are doing it. Most of the time we are not even aware that we are doing it.
The problem is we have to train ourselves to be aware of our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions. We need a coach to help us train our self-awareness, and we can do this by applying what psychologists call the “attentional lens.” Just think of a basketball game you know you are going to win and how you can train yourself to keep an eye on the ball and know when you need to stop shooting.
The attentional lens is the mechanism by which we train our self-awareness. It is the mechanism by which we learn to see the world around us through the lens of our own actions. When we are aware of our own actions and patterns, we are able to train our attentional lenses to see what we need to do and not need to do. When we train our attentional lenses we learn to control what we see and what we ignore.
