We're in a fabulous place called Purgatory. We don't have to stay here. If you remember Volume One - it's all the mental tools for self-awareness through self-understanding that you can apply discipline to change the trajectory of your experience in life. You see; an expedition is a journey with a purpose. If your purpose is to transform what you've been handed into something you desire then Volume 2 is going to be fabulous.
I've known quite a few people that have gone to seminars and workshops with the hope that they would get a bit of a bump, a lift, an artificial boost to their self-awareness. In my experience self-awareness does not come without great effort. You gotta walk up that thing. (looking up a ski slope). If you just get airlifted to the top of your Personal Everest you're gonna get edema with brain swelling. You'll blow up. You will die on the mountain.
Here's an example: The deal with a scotoma (a blind spot) is that they are really hard to find. They're usually right in front of you, but you usually go down a long windy path to find the simplest little thing that just escapes you.
Case in point: let me show you the problem. Watch the door. It's not latching. Look at that. You can't drive a car with an unlatched door because you'll fall out.
This is a $68,000 brand new Ford F-150. I go on the internet to figure out the door latch issue. I start seeing that Ford's got a 2.15 million vehicle recall, a 1.3 million vehicle recall, and 1.34 Million door latch problems. There's a class-action suit. This has been an ongoing thing. It's been years and years and years with all different models. Oh my gosh. The problem just on and on and on.
■ Scotomas are subtly deceptive ■ Stepping back you can sleuth them out ■ Cognitive Biases are used against us ■ AI is not your friend, it's your opponent ■ Take time to discover blind-spots
Then I'm calling the dealership to find out that we can't get the vehicle in until Monday because it's Friday now and after they look at it, it'll be seven to ten days to get the parts, and then it'll be three or four days in repair meaning it's probably two weeks from now before that can be fixed.
But then they looked up my Vin number to discover something very interesting. We purchased the truck in December 2019. We filled out all the paperwork and did all the prepaying of the fees and taxes. It is almost August. We don't yet have our title. Because we don't have our title means we can't fix our vehicle because we don't own it. It's not ours yet.
Angelina shares; "I've gone back and forth between emails and phone calls and re-sending documents, but no title yet. Right now we have a door that won't latch which will swing open. When Daniel drives I could fall out. I won't because we can't drive the truck.
Daniel: "You've been very patient waiting for them to do their job."
Angelina; "I'm not patient anymore because now it's a safety issue and it's a transportation issue!"
She has been so patient. I've been wanting to go get the license plates. Look on the back of the book: it says SCO OMA. The printer rejected the book with three fix-it tickets because the spelling doesn't have the 'T' in the middle of SCOTOMA. I can't get the plates yet because the car is not ours. I have to be patient because with COVID most people are working at home. That's garbage. That's incompetence. We've worked from home and remotely for 20 years.
I had some defuse time to think about where is the SCOTOMA? What am I not noticing? There's got to be something in this. It can't possibly be this complex so that even Angelina gets triggered. Let's go have a look at the truck to show you what I discovered...
I sat down to have some diffuse time. I literally thought through what I've read about the recalls and about the latches FREEZING and all the other things that typically go wrong. Wait a minute... let me look at something.
Angelina: "Yesterday I had some mints when we took my daughter to the airport. I put the package back in the pocket below the door handle which is where you store all of your things. Unbeknownst to me...
Daniel: "You just put them in here. Look at how easy it is just to flip them down. It's really easy and what does that do? It keeps the door unlatched. It holds the door-latch open. That's why it won't latch because the mint case is holding the latch open.
Angelina: "I have to stick the mints down at the bottom of the door so I don't fall out of the car while you're driving... because of some mints?
Daniel: "Here's the takeaway from this example of becoming self-aware and leaving SCOTOMAVILLE. The tools in Volume One match up with the stories in Volume Two and in this case, you can see the pattern recognition - I'm thinking THINGS ARE ALWAYS COMPLICATED it's got to be hard so I jump right to a conclusion with the 20-watt brain. We find patterns. We spot them right away. They become familiar. They match up with patterns and experiences we've had previously and so we proceed right down a pathway. We become 100 percent wrong 50 percent of the time.
To my credit, I took an opportunity for diffuse time to let the whole thing soak, Using triangulation I created another point of view. I stepped back to reassess everything and there it is! It's simply a package of mints, not two weeks without a vehicle and a thousand dollars in costs!
I'm showing you these tools really work.
I don't want you to miss my point. I started out looking for safety recalls. Now on YouTube in the recommended sidebar have AI chasing me. Machine learning pattern recognition is recommending my next move. Really, it's confirming my beliefs, not leading me to the truth. It's giving more of what I already believe. Walled Gardens!
See how this is all tied together?
I really want for you to become more than just self-aware - you know seeing what it is you do. I want you to become understanding - knowing why you do what you do WYDWYD. Better than that, having the discipline to chart a path into new horizons to create a life for yourself that you weren't handed - to be able to change things from what you inherited into what you desire. That can be done. I've done it. We're starting the Expedition leaving the Pacific Northwest heading to New Mexico to step into our own Airstream. From there we are journeying to where it takes us. I look forward to all those episodes to come - which at this point I do not know. I want to see how we handle the events of the future - the changes - the curves - the disruptions - the life that happens between our plans!
Welcome to Volume Two
The greatest expedition you will ever undertake is the journey to self-understanding, as the prize is not in discovering new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. I invite you on that journey!