By Emile De Bruin (Head Coach Meta4mance)

Technology has made navigation so easy. You enter your destination and that posh British lady tells you exactly where to go.

I remember doing mapwork in geography at school and how a lot of the skill was in balancing the map (that was bigger than the desk), the workbook, your protractor and ruler all while trying to draw cross section of the landscape. Accompanied with trying to ignore thirty other students rustling their maps around and block out the kid behind me who was having the exact same struggle and continued to bump his map into me.

Thank heavens the map is just a representation of the real world. Can you imagine using a life size map to get you to your destination? Impractical right?

Maps use scales and symbols to illustrate and simplify what is actually going on in the real world. They allow us to take some perspective.

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Similarly, we all have our own “maps” that we use to navigate through our lives. We all create our own representations around events and things that happen.

Our surroundings (environment) shape our values. Values that we have by default or values that have been inherited from family, friends, colleagues, media and so on.

This makes us form “maps of our world”.

Is this wrong, well no. But how well would a map of London serve you in Johannesburg?

“The Map is not the Territory”

We need to select the correct map for the applicable environment.

For example;

1. Swimming gives girls big shoulders. Maybe girls born with wide shoulders make good swimmers?

2. Sugar makes you fat. Maybe if you chose to eat too much of anything, you will get fat.

3. That person does not like me because they cross their arms and look down when I speak to them. Maybe that person’s dominant sense is kinesthetic (feeling) and kinesthetic people tend to look down and to the right when they learn something, and crossing their arms supports their subconscious need to feel comfortable. (More on this in future articles).

4. I can’t win in this….(insert most applicable excuse here- School, sport, job , relationship, city, country…. etc). Maybe you can’t with your current map. Maybe you need to change your map?

In an age of instant gratification where an app or technology does most of our thinking for us we are more lost than ever.

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Time for us to take responsibility to create lives that we want to live and believe in things that will empower us.

How do I get the right map?

Well your belief system maps out how you see yourself in your world. Why not understand what your limiting beliefs (like doubt and fear for example) are really trying to tell you? Why don’t you change your beliefs.

What beliefs that you have about yourself hold you back?

Try this:

Write down a limiting belief that you have about yourself. For example: I will never be as fit as I once was or I don’t have the time to train.

Then answer the questions below.

1. Where does that belief come from. Was it there by default? When did that belief begin?
2. If I choose to hold onto this belief what will it cost me? (Physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially)
3. How could things be different if I let go of this belief?
4. What do I want to replace this belief with?

Is it time for you to upgrade your maps?

Find out more by clicking on the image

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