Benefits of the BIG Picture
What’s in it for you?
- Understand what’s actually going on around and within us
- Use this knowledge for maximum efficiency in learning and growth
- Know the best ways to affect the direction of our lives
- Realize what is helping us and what is getting in our way
- See how people and settings affect us both negatively and positively
- See how our actions impact others both negatively and positively
- Work with the natural flow of growth and change instead of fighting the currents
We live in an infinite universe and we can’t help but focus on a tiny fraction of it. It’s not our fault. We have a limited capacity to see, hear, know, think, and understand. And we easily overlook all the things we don’t really know about.
For example, try a little thought experiment:
Try to notice everything that’s around you, wherever you are…. go ahead, take a minute and try to be aware of everything in your immediate environment. Find everything you can possibly notice in any way….
…….
…….
……
Okay. Did you get everything? Of course not, that’s impossible. For example, did you notice your heart beating? The feel of your feet on the floor? The fact that you’re breathing right now? The way your clothes feel on your body? Or maybe how your toes feel in your shoes and how the air feels against your skin? -> The point is that awareness is necessarily limited. So since we can’t account for everything, we need to at least make sure we have a good general understanding of the major contours of reality.
And that’s both good and bad news. It means we don’t need to all be expert chemists, historians, philosophers, mathematicians, and medical doctors all in one. However, if we really want to navigate this world as smoothly as possible, it’s our responsibility to at least have a general idea of how these different aspects of the universe work. If we don’t then we allow ourselves to be victims to whatever comes at us because we won’t understand it.
Understand the Lay of the Land
Having an accurate big picture perspective means we at least have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of the world around us. The benefit of this knowledge is that we can figure out how we fit into everything and also how we can get to wherever it is that we want to go.
We also protect ourselves from being duped by charlatans, loop-hole politics, empty rhetoric, and crafty advertisements. That’s because the big pictures includes an idea of how the universe works around us, an understanding of people and society, and how we too are influenced by culture, values, and social groups.
Knowing how our surroundings affect us, we can then get a more accurate idea of who we are and who we want to be. Even if we don’t know who it is we’d like to be or what we’d like to do, a big picture view gives us the clues we need to start taking steps towards figuring out what really matters to us.
And perhaps most importantly, this sort of sweeping oversight of our lives in a bigger context reduces the likelihood that some catastrophe will completely blindside us. Of course our awareness is naturally limited and we can never know all there is to know about what’s to come. We’re always vulnerable on some front. But taking time to step back and look where we’ve come from and where we’re going (both individually and collectively) gives us the best chances to take control of our own lives.
***Recommended Resources for Stepping Back and Getting a View of the Big Picture:
Anyone who engages these texts will either revolutionize their worldview to a more accurate picture of the universe around us; or at the very least will have his/her worldview fleshed out with most of the major contours that direct our lives.
- Cosmos – Niel DeGrass Tyson or Carl Sagan (TV Show)
- A Theory of Everything – Ken Wilber (Book)
- A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson (Audio Book)
- The Great Ideas of Psychology – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)
- 12 Essential Scientific Concepts – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)
Click on Each for an overview of the specific benefits and limitations of each text. (coming soon)
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