Are you and Adult or are you a Child?

Hello, Mark here again. And I hope you've enjoyed the first two blog posts. If you haven't read them, I encourage you to please go back and read them. They really give a good foundation. Yeah, they're a little heavy. I understand that. However they're necessary and they're actually crucial to beginning your transformation. So if you haven't done so, please go back and read them.

Today we're going to shift gears a little bit and be a little lighter, and give you something to think about at the end. This is going to deal with how we approach things in our lives and how we change from when we're younger to older. It's an experiment that I heard about many years ago. I forget where I heard it or who did it, it's been so long.

The experiment was this. They took a group of adults and they took a group of young children, about four or five years old. They did this experiment individually and separately. Then one at a time each went through this simple experiment.

The experiment dealt with a door, and the door looked just like any other door. It had hinges on it, a doorknob, everything. However, what they had done was they had installed the hinges on the outside side of the door where no one could see and  on the same side where the doorknob was.

One by one the adults were brought into the room and ask to leave. Each adult went up to the door and they turned the knob and they pulled and pulled and it wouldn't open. So they decided it was locked and they just sat there and waited. Of course a person would come in and take them out and put the next adult in the room. The result was the same. They continued this experiment and they found that all the adults went up to the door and they tried and tried to open it, and it wouldn't open. They were all asked how come you didn't open the door? All said it was locked. 

Then they brought the children in there. These were young children about four or five year olds. Each child was put in the room one at a time and asked to leave through the door. The child would go up to the door and they'd pull the knob, and they'd push a little bit, and it wouldn't open. They'd push, and try other things. And then they pushed the other side and the door opened. Every child did basically the same thing. They just kept trying different things until they pushed the door open and went out. 

This is very interesting. The adults, you would think, are much wiser and more experienced making it easy for them to get the door open. And you would think the children would not be able to except by luck. Yet the results were the exact opposite. Why is this? It comes back to the fact that we build up the way we see our realities. In NLP we call them filters. 

So basically you go through life, and you experience something, and then it's stored. In this example, we learn the door opens where the knob is and the hinges on the other side attach to the wall. If it does not open, it is locked. So, you go through life, and you built up filters, and develop routines, so your reality is what this experiment exposed. 

The adults were just operating off of that system. They went up to the door, there are the hinges and the doorknob here. I should pull it and it should open. When it doesn't it must be locked. That's the routine the adults were playing in their head and how they decided the door was locked. 

Whereas the children, they don't have those filters and the routine. They're still young. They haven't experienced enough door scenarios to develop their filters and routine yet. They just were told to open the door and go outside. So they go over to the door and they try different things until it opens. They have no concept of hinges here and the knob there so can only open one way. They don't understand that. So they just push it and open it. 

What I want you to think about this week is very simple. How many things in your life have you missed out on because you just tried the door the way that you thought it was supposed to work and it didn't and you assumed it was locked? 

How many opportunities have you missed? 

How many things would you go back and do differently now?

Hold on. I don't want you to beat yourself up, that's not what I'm saying. I just want you to think about it. 

So, are you an adult or are you a child? 

Remember to shift your mind and master your life. See you next time.