The capacity of humans to ignore the bleeding obvious still amazes me.
It’s a survival tactic.
It’s not productive to ruminate on the environmental disaster we’ve created. Or ignore that changing ourselves to fit into a hierarchy we don’t believe in makes us sick.
Blinkering ourselves is far more than just a survival tactic.
It can help us thrive.
People who excel in one particular area, skill, or task tend to be able to blinker themselves to life’s distractions.
They can focus on one thing and ignore everything else around them until they complete it or burn out.
Most of us want to be left alone so we can look after ourselves and our family and maybe have some fun along the way. So we blinker ourselves to our potential.
That very same trait most people unconsciously use to limit themselves is one of the hardest to apply consciously.
Mastering that skill — self-control — will help us get anything and everything we ever wanted.