Demystifying Situational Illusions

MC Escher was a master at creating visual illusions, like his circular steps that just keep going up and up, or his 3-D drawings or A into B or B into A drawings. Then there are those a perceptual illusions which are always great fun until they give you a headache!

There's another type of illusion, though, something I call Situational Illusions. Situational Illusions are what get created when we interpret events in our lives through a lens of self-limiting judgments. For example, how many times have you thought that some task would be totally impossible, yet when you finally got around to doing it, you were left wondering what all the fuss was about? Or more importantly, how many times have you thought that some task would be totally impossible, so you never even tried? That's the sad story in all this.

The thing that's so maniacal about these Situational Illusions is that they seem so very real, totally fact-based, completely objective and undeniably true ... Even when they're not. Indirectly, Pablo Picasso said, "Everything you can imagine is real," and in a way it IS.

So the next time you find yourself reluctant to try something new, procrastinating from doing something 'difficult', or just failing to stretch your comfort zone, realize that it might just be due to a Situational Illusion you've unknowingly created. And find someone to help you work through it.