YOUR VISION HOLDS YOU BACK

“I can’t embrace an unknown future when I can’t see where it will take me!”

Sound familiar?

Sight is your dominant sense

Where dogs rely on smell and bats on sound, humans primarily use vision to understand the world. Human sight signals what tastes good, who sounds better, and where to touch. But is it reliable?

Have you ever taken a perfect plate of food and placed it in a clean kitchen sink? You know the sink is clean, there is nothing else in it, and yet, all of a sudden the food feels dirty and inedible. Or how about when you hear a beautiful bird sound and look out the window to see who is singing. Your eyes naturally search for the most colorful bird, and when you don’t find it, you figure he’s hiding. But the truth, in an analysis of more than 500 species, the best looking birds aren’t actually the most talented singers*. The best vocalists are a little rough on the eyes, therefore you don’t see her because she doesn’t fit your expectations.

Ok, ok… so we give some extra weight to what we see, what is the problem with that?

Well, “How do you take an evolutionary leap into an unknown future if you need to see where you are going before you can make the jump?”

How do you live in alignment with your values, when you can’t “see” the actions that will get you there?

Basically, you don’t.

Right now, unless you foresee every possible step forward, you’re paralyzed. And if in your visualizations, the effects of your actions foresee negative consequences in the near future—such as a dip in pay when you first leave your job to become an entrepreneur—even if you sense there will be super positive ramifications farther along the branch of time, you trust what you “see” instead of what you “feel”.

So if you keep relying on your sense of sight as your compass, you’ll keep taking small steps. Life changes will be in tiny, safe increments, which might have been OK when we had time.

But today, that time is over.

It is no longer acceptable to rely solely “seeing” it in order to act on it. You can’t keep passing the responsibility to someone or something else when faced with an unknown future and expect transformational change to occur. You need to recognize your responsibility to bring real change to Life through your actions.

All that meditating and praying… great to center yourself. Now you need to ACT on those beliefs pronto or we are headed toward extinction.

Reflecting on visionary limitations

In this period, I’ve been asking myself many questions:

• What does the world I want to live in look like?
• How do I see my actions changing in order to evolve into a person that can create that world?
• Who do I look like when I become that person?

But these are the wrong questions.

The questions above play into the same visionary limitations we’ve been talking about. They require me to “see” in order to do something about it.

But I’m human—I was taught to rely on vision. Vision plan, vision board, become a visionary… isn’t that what I am supposed to use?

Not if it holds you back!

Humans keeps saying we want to evolve, but the truth of the matter is if you look at human behavior, it’s obvious we want to stay the same. We’re afraid of evolving. Evolving means going into the nothing, into an unknown future, and we’re not raised to embrace an uncertain vision.

You need to see it to create it. Isn’t that what you were taught?

Even as children, we look to our parents for social references. Don’t touch that when mom’s face says no, and don’t do that without seeing dad give permission. As we transition to adults, we transfer those social references to bigger entities, such as government and culture, looking to them to show us our next move.

So when do we develop our own moral compass? When do we take the time to reflect on our beliefs to consciously choose whether or not we want to believe in them? 

But how do you do that if you need to see something you’ve never been shown before?

It is time to bring in your other senses.

When being sessile is an advantage

Working with the plant kingdom, I recognize that fear of failure—in all its permutations—is what drove my need for safety. I looked for a nod from my parents, the universe, or some other entity outside of myself to relieve the fear before I could move forward because that way I had someone else to blame. And if it didn’t arrive, I ran away and hid.

Plants don’t have that liberty.

Being sessile in nature, they are rooted into the ground for most of their physical lives. Because of this, they’ve developed more than 20 highly sensitive senses to figure out the world around them.

This awareness of their environment, coupled that with their willingness to share information across vast distances and time, enhance their decision making skills. Rather than giving them the ability to guarantee an outcome, I believe these senses help them embrace uncertainty. They are more willing to “try”, even when unable to see the outcome, because they can sense other conditions.

They test ideas, then wait for changes in the environment, listening to the feedback loops they’ve created. This give them vital data to choose a final path.

Plants constantly teach me how to expand my senses—to reach out of my visible comfort zone. They help me craft communications and tend to the needs of the ecosystem. Because the stronger the ecosystem, the more resilient the individual!

So taking this into consideration, I am switching up my reflection questions in this period. 

To better guide next-level of evolution, ask yourself:

• What do I need in order to feel safe in an unknown future?
• What characteristics do I need to evolve in order to leap into action?
• How can I use other senses to decide what actions to take?

Use audio to hear new ideas or crafting to feel textured responses. Trigger transformation through taste and smell when you cook. Use your imagination, even that is a sense! And remember to let me know what you try. You can post on the Naturally Conscious Community or leave a comment here.

If you’re looking to evolve in these changing times, I want you to have the support you need. Knowing you have someone in your corner dedicated to you, who can help you define a personalized strategy, gives you that extra push to pivot with greater ease from unknown future into clear action plan.

Book a discovery call with me to discuss what the plant world and I can do to ensure that you have the resilient flexibility you need to evolve.

* Male birds can be good singers or good looking, but not both