"If you want to get from A to B in your life, accept that everything you do is a reflex grounded in your assumptions." #readingToday The point about perception here is that if you want to get from A to B in your life, whether you're transitioning personally or professionally, the first challenge is to accept that everything you do is a reflex grounded in your assumptions. So we need humility. Though change never happens without it, by itself that is never enough. Once we come to accept that all we see and do is grounded in our assumptions, we are nonetheless usually blind to the reasons why we do what we do. The next challenge to deviation, then, is to discover what your assumptions are. This usually involves other people who are foreign to you, hence the power of the diversity of groups. The next step is to complexify your assumptions—and thus redefine normality—by actively engaging in the contrasting nature of the world. That's what Destin did, as did the people who wore the feelSpace magnetic belt and acquired heightened powers of navigation. Another key for seeing differently is not to move through the world comfortably. Whether literally or metaphorically, in one's body or in one's mind, we need to get dirty, to get lost, to get swallowed by the experience. This could sound clichéd, but it's nonetheless true… and necessary to reiterate loudly, given the speed of the sprint in which much of the Western world is running toward health and safety. (We're rushing so fast toward mitigating against short-term risk that to stand still in our society is to become relatively risky!) Don't be a tourist of your own life, taking your assumptions with you wherever you go. Leave them in the lift at JFK or at Terminal 5 at Heathrow. And when you get to wherever you're going, buy groceries, ask for directions in the local language, navigate an unknown transit system, try to remember how to get back to your hotel rather than referring constantly to your Google map. And through it all, listen to your emotions so you know whether you've traveled far enough. Only in this way will you be able to discover the mishaps and misfits that all-inclusive luxury vacations rob you of. Only then will you discover the invisible in yourself by assuming you might be wrong about your "knowledge" of things. Seek new, more generalizable assumptions through real-world engagement in concert with your delusional powers, and in doing so, you will alter the probabilities of your future reflexive responses by increasing the chances of beating the kurtotic biases that past experiences have given you. This is how you institute new and better assumptions and "travel" to new perceptions. In short, don't shift… expand! But once you have unblinded your assumptions, experimenting with new ones is not an easy process, and our very own evolution often steers us away from it. Our brains want to avoid it, even if the results will be generative for us. This brings us to the second biggest challenge to creativity: we are afraid of the dark. "Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently" by Beau Lotto Start reading this book for free: http://a.co/h604z8C