“Free Your Mind”
How to overcome the limitations you allow yourself to experience.
In the iconic, 1999 movie The Matrix, there is a moment when Morpheus tells Neo that in order to achieve his full potential he needs to open up his mind to the possibilities presented by his realization that the present is now different to what he’d assumed it was. He tells him to “free his mind”. The quote, heavily borrowed from Eastern philosophy reflects on the fact that many of the shackles that bind us are of our own making.
We tend to behave according to our understanding of who we are, how others view us and how we think others view us. In Intentional I explained how social psychologists call this Centrality, Ingroup Affect and Ingroup Ties.
In essence it comes down to what we place most weight on: what we want to achieve or what we think we should achieve so we gain social acceptance by those around us. You can see the clip from The Matrix below:
