Even though learning science has over time produced a wide range of learning strategies and learning techniques, the principle of mapping your world is difficult to explain. But it’s important, because your map of the world plays a key role in shaping your life, and ignoring it can cause you great harm.
Invisible To The Naked Eye
Personal maps of the world are invisible to the naked eye, hence extra difficult to learn about. Like thoughts, they are real, but invisible. You might have heard of the assertion that 80% of winning is psychology, or of the inner game of golf (or of tennis, etc.), or of psychological make-up or blueprint of the mind. All these things refer to the same thing – to the inner map of the world all humans carry inside themselves, each their own. Learning to “see” the map of the world within is a bit like learning to view 3D illusion art, or to ride a bicycle. Once you get it, it gets easier and easier.
Blueprint Of Your Life
Your map of the world acts as the blueprint to your life. To the degree that it depicts the world as it really is, or as you wish it were, it leads you to construct your life on solid ground, or on wishful thinking. Regardless of whether you believe in it or not, your map of the world holds the key to what comes to (your) mind when you hear the word “God” (or Allah, Buddha, Krishna, _____), or any other word for that matter (ever noticed how people, when asked to draw a tree, all “see” different trees?), whether life has a purpose or not, whether happiness is the reward of virtue or a virtue itself, what is cool and what is uncool, whether time exists outside of the now, whether you are the creator or the victim of circumstances, what you value and what you despise, what you value most in life, whether miracles are real or fake, whether your life is written in the stars or made in the moments of your decisions, what is right and what is wrong, whether failure exists or not, whether forgiveness must be earned or has been granted, how you respond to praise and to criticism, whether truth exists or must be created, whether life is made of choices or of obligations, whether you follow your bliss or something else instead, whether love is a noun or a verb, whether angels exist or not, whether you have invisible helpers or are all by yourself, whether life is a party or difficult, and whether any of this matters or not. Only one person can locate, see and read your map – you. But regardless of whether you see it or not, it’s there. And plays a big part in your life.
If You Were In Charge
If you were in charge of the space program, or of Virgin Galactic’s upcoming space travel, would you send astronauts into space without an accurate map?
Not, if you’re a sane person, for a sane person wouldn’t dream of going into space without an accurate map. Yet many sane people don’t think twice before sending themselves, and sometimes their families and kids with them, into life equipped with only a map they know little or nothing about. With predictable results.
The seemingly irrational behavior, quite simply, stems from the fact that while “visible” maps are very much part of basic education, the “invisible” personal maps which people carry in their minds are not. In this way everyone learns about one type of maps, but not about the other, even though of equal or greater importance. But basic education is not to blame, for it does not deal with how we are made, its primary goal is only to render us functional, regardless of how we are made. Learning about “invisible” maps takes you beyond mere function, and requires understanding of how your personal map is created in the first place, and if you don’t like it, how to change it.
Imagine yourself in London. You buy a map of London, but are mistakenly sold a map of Boston. You’re in the right place with the wrong map. The same thing happens to people on life’s journey equipped with a map inside that does not conform to the outer world. They might as well carry a map from another planet. Not doing anything wrong, they nevertheless keep getting lost. Doubting their ability to function they grow frustrated, angry, stressed, depressed, or worse. Doing right with wrong results is not fun! Because they can seemingly not achieve long-term goals, they may escape into instant gratification provided by food, alcohol, drugs (legal and illegal), gambling and sex, jeopardizing their health, finances, reputation and marriages in the process. But when they are handed the right map, everything changes. This is what “Mapping Your World” is all about – learning to be in the right place with the right map.
Your Map – Uniquely Yours
Your inner map – the personal map of the world that you carry within – is …
- The most important map of all.
- With you day and night, 7/24.
- Your guide at the darkest hours, and during the brightest moments alike.
- Directly or indirectly determines your life and destiny.
- Real, whether you believe it or not. If you don’t consciously build your own map, your mind “in the back of your mind” creates its own. Not necessarily a good or a bad thing, it’s just the way it is – a basic need, like breathing.
You can build your map of the world with information that pops into to your mind, or that others work to pop into your mind, or – last but hopefully not least – that you decide to pop into your mind yourself.
Imagine Taking A Trip
Imagine yourself preparing for a trip around the world. You’d likely use a variety of sources – people, internet, books, libraries – and you’d sift through the information, retaining some, eliminating some. As you begin your trip, you’d continuously adjust your map based on actual experience and discovery.
The same outline applies to the creative process of the map you carry on the inside. Many begin their life journey completely unaware, inadvertently guided to nowhere, into dead end streets, in circles, or worse.
The Choice Is Yours
You have no control at all over your mind’s decision to create the map it needs to function – the decision was made even before you were born. However, you have full control over the creative process, and about the quality of the map. Since it will guide you through the rest of your life, which map would you rather carry inside:
- A map of the world as it is (continuously updated with new information)
- A map of the world as it could, should or would be, if only __________________ (fill the blank)
All it takes is conscious awareness and, like all learning, practice, practice, practice – a small price to pay for a big difference!
Note: For an amazing collection of maps, visit http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
QUOTES
- What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly. – Richard Bach
- There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. – Mahatma Gandhi
- The learners will inherit the world. The learned will be beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists. – Anonymous
- As human beings, our greatness lays not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves. – Mahatma Gandhi
- If you give a boy a hammer, the whole world becomes a nail. – Unknown
- The mind remembers what the mind does, not what the world does. – James Jenkins
- Keep in mind, the mind with which you remember is the same mind with which you forget. – Beat Schindler
- Change your thoughts and you change your world. – Norman Vincent Peale
- The world is but a canvas to the imagination. – Henry David Thoreau
- The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought. – James Allen
- Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- My grievances hide the light of the world. – A Course In Miracles
- Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority. – Martin Luther King
- We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. Except for children, who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions, few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is. – Carl Sagan
- The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible. – Albert Einstein
- There are only two ways to see the world. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. - Albert Einstein
- We do not see things as they are, but as we are. – Immanuel Kant
- The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. – Sydney J. Harris
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