An excerpt from Dave’s Amazon #1 Best seller: The Imperative Habit: 7 Non-Spiritual Practices Towards Spiritual Behavior – For Happiness, Health, Love and Success...

There is a human condition that says we are unable to know or comprehend something unless we have a prior context. I call this the “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know” syndrome. In fact, it is said that the Native Americans did not see the Spanish galleons sailing along their shore. When a conquistador approached them on the beach and said, “We have sailed across the world and now place our flag on your beach,” it was not until then that the natives had the needed context—“sailing” and “vessels”—and only then could their brains use that context to create the correct image of a boat, an image that their eyes had never seen before.

From a scientific perspective, our eyes only collect information in the form of light reflected off objects. Our brain puts the image together based on context or based on the brain’s own programming. Our brain puts together and attributes meaning to 90% of what we see. Since they had never before seen or known of a massive galleon ship, the Native American brain had no context for the information delivered to it. Thus, their brains had no way to interpret the reflected light image of a Spanish galleon. As a result, they didn’t see the ships. The images just didn’t register. Initially, at least.

Personal introspection, inner growth, and the effort needed to change ourselves is a bit like that too. What I mean is that we can’t even see our problems if we do not have the context to comprehend them. Our problems don’t register as problems. They register as being normal, being the way things are. We often cannot see our problems unless we see that an answer exists.

I didn’t. I had no idea that where I am today existed. I mean, I had no idea I could internally be happy, whole, full of energy, joyous, healthy, fit, successful, and stress-free. Because I had no idea that these things could be achieved without external “things.” And I had no plans or knowledge to look inward. I always looked outward for things and not inward for growth. Not knowing this inward “solution” existed caused me to never look in that direction.

When I eventually saw my own problems, I felt like a Native American looking at big Spanish galleons with guns and a flag on my beach. I was totally overwhelmed, whereas moments before I was not.

A solution or better life situation DOES, and will always, exist. Believing and understanding this helps us conceptualize any problem in our lives. Don’t feel overwhelmed (as I did) or bad because (1) we all have problems, and (2) a person’s growth potential is endless. This “better life situation” will likely not be located on the same path as the one you have already been on. Otherwise, your efforts would only yield more of the same. The context for the same path is already present and not an agent for change. But rather, if you continue down the same path in hopes of reaching a better life, you’ll simply encounter the same obstacles and the same results, which are likely a long way away from happiness.

When we cannot see a new “better life situation” on a different path, then we have no real context to truly discover the real problems that are preventing us from solving them. Conventional views are that we cannot solve what we cannot see. It is like the old phrase, being unable to see the forest for the trees. This is such an omnipresent quote in society, but we’ve likely never applied, practiced, and implemented it into our own lives for success.

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