Previously I have posted an article about how various things in our life can trap us. I want to expand this topic a bit further and focus on the concept of tunnel vision. Problems caused by tunnel vision are so ubiquitous that we almost cannot get rid of them completely, but having a clear understanding and awareness of this concept would certainly be helpful.
So what is tunnel vision and why does it matter to us?
Before answering this question, I’d like you to think about a time that you made a mistake in the past that you thought you should have been able to avoid, or a time you just realized that you were being naive and silly for something you have done. (If you don’t have such experiences, well, probably you need more self-awareness. ) As human beings, we constantly update our thoughts and views as we go through our life, so we’re usually not thinking in the same way as in the past. A mistake that we made in the past might bother us a lot at that time, but in retrospect, it may be not a big deal at all. The reason for that is we generally lack the ability to foresee how our view will update in the future. Oftentimes, we just feel so trapped and desperate that there seems to be nothing we can do to get out at the moment. This is where tunnel vision comes in.
Generally speaking, tunnel vision is a mental state that we are temporarily so convinced that certain things must be done in a certain way. It represents a belief that we have in our life. Anything that contradicts this belief is unacceptable to us and must be abandoned. As a result, we are unable to see alternative choices and other possibilities. Tunnel vision is much easier to understand than to recognize. What might be surprising is that we are actually seeing things in our life through tunnel vision almost all the time without realizing it!
We do things most likely based on our previous experience. Our previous experience provides a lot of feedback to us so that we learn what is a good way to do things from a bad one. If we keep doing things in a good, right certain way in our definition, the way we do things will get strengthened further and further. Over an extended period, we are likely to form a relatively stable view of how things should be done until something shocking to us appear again. This is how we learn and update our views on things. In most cases, we are only utilizing our past experience available to us rather than try to do things in a substantially different way.
The major reason behind it is that we would like ourselves to become more efficient in doing without too much thinking, at the cost of overlooking alternative solutions and possibilities. This is also commonly known as the comfort zone. We feel comfortable because we have experience and have done something similar, so we can expect a similar result. Moreover, jumping out of our comfort zone means we have to take the risk and extra energy to think about new solutions and alternatives, which is time-consuming and also very unpredictable at best. As an uncertainty adverse human being, probably this is going to be a very hard thing. We tend to stay in the comfort zone most of the time, and as a result, we tend to view things through tunnel vision most of the time!
Everything based on past experience is tunnel vision. Everything you keep doing all the time is tunnel vision. I am not saying that tunnel vision is necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly limits us because we tend not to think about all the other choices and possibilities in things we do. In certain phases of life, we may get confused, anxious, upset, desperate, and unable to find a way out of a tough situation, then we should start thinking about tunnel vision. Tunnel vision theory can explain most (if not all!) of the problems in life and help us put things in perspective. We should just get started with the concept of tunnel vision in our minds. This is also the very first step to get out of the mental barrier that human nature has set up for us.
