Life Angles: LIFE Acronym #13 - Life's Illusions Frequently Ensnare

LIFE Acronym #13:
"Life's Illusions Frequently Ensnare"

Here's a thought-provoking phrase for you:

"Traps work only because the victim was not aware of or looking for the danger."

Did that provoke any deep thoughts? If not, please allow me to help stir the juices of your brain.

Think of an animal trap for a moment. Before animals are ensnared in a trap, they are NEVER aware that they are in danger.

Picture whatever trap you want. Personally I'm picturing a live capture trap, for mid-sized animals, with a pressure plate and spring-activated door.

Animals may be of a lower intelligence than we humans are, but you had better believe that they have a built-in mechanism for alerting them of danger so that they can flee or fight.

A trap is designed to look harmless, and anything but dangerous. And the animal has no idea that it is about to be caught. What an unpleasant surprise!

As the animal walks up to the cage, all of its instinctive, protective inner programs are running as they always do. Its senses look, smell, and listen for danger.

Because it doesn't SEE, HEAR, or SMELL any danger, it assumes that it is safe to proceed forward. Next thing it knows, SLAM!!! It's caught.

We can act just like these little critters at times. Just like animals, we have inner programs running that try their best to keep us away from danger. But just like animals, there exist dangerous things that we cannot see.

If you ever feel that you "have it all under control", you could not be further from the truth. The man who knows that he knows nothing, knows more than the learned man who thinks that he knows it all.

There are always hidden traps, and nobody can possibly see all of them. But, unlike animals, we can definitely see many of them, if we're looking through a special set of goggles called "experience".

Not everyone has those goggles though, and some people's goggles are more powerful than others. But the good news is that we can borrow "experience goggles" from other people.

Let's explore a for instance. Let's say that you are considering postponing making a major change in your life, a change that will undeniably make your life better by leaps and bounds. Let's say that one day in a conversation with someone older and wiser than you, you tell them "I'm probably gonna live to at least 80 years, so I'm in no hurry".

Then let's suppose that the person you're talking to immediately jumps into a lecture about the dangers of procrastination, and actually motivates you to stop postponing it. This would be an example of you "looking though someone else's experience goggles". You looked through their perspective and saw the fallacy of your own.

Postponing change is such a classic trick (A.K.A. trap), and INNUMERABLE people fall for it. Do you have ANY idea how many people go to their graves having their song unsung?! Procrastination is one of the oldest mistakes out there, and anyone with any experience in life probably has regrets about it, and desires for you to learn from their experiences rather than doing the same things yourself.

When we procrastinate a needed change and think there's nothing wrong with that, it's like we're a little critter ourselves, and we're sizing up a cage, smelling it out, and deciding there's nothing wrong there. When we go for the delectable food in the cage, that's called "paying now instead of paying later". And the trap springs on us!

Paying for something now instead of paying later would be akin to relaxing now and not expending the energy that's necessary for effectuating a change. You will pay later for your mistake because you didn't pay today by taking the time to make the change.

Another example of "paying now instead of paying later" would be buying everything that you want today and saving nothing for retirement. You may be enjoying all the fancy things today, but you will pay later by not having any retirement. If you had foregone some of today's luxuries to invest some of your money, you would be paying now and reaping the rewards later.

I could go though countless examples of traps that we may or may not see. But I'll leave that up to you and your own exploration. I'll just admonish you to do your part to look for those traps and be wary of them.

Use the experience of friends and family to avoid traps. But most importantly, use the experience of the world's smartest and wisest people by reading their books. Do not let your progression be stagnant.

GO GET A TOP 100 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT BOOK AND READ IT! Or, better yet, just read God's word, which is the wisest of them all.