The Map is Not the Territory
A phrase first coined by Alfred Korzybski. Alfred worked in the general semantics field in the 1900s. What does this phrase mean though? It means that our maps and models of how the world works will only ever be an approximate or an estimation of the ‘actual’ world. Of course, this makes sense at an intuitive level. An actual map of your city, state, or country, by necessity, has been scaled down to be practical.
Specific elements have been filtered out in the process to create a “decent or useful” representation of the streets and pathways of the city for nifty navigational purposes. Buildings are removed. Some streets don’t have names on them. You certainly can’t see the state of the pedestrian pavements and sidewalks.
This representation is useful in helping you to navigate from place to place, however looking at a place on a map is a different experience altogether from the 100% sensory intake that takes place in the real world, seeing all the details that were filtered out to create the map.
We like maps and models, they are useful, and that’s why we rely on them as NLP Practitioners. What’s important to remember though is the real world is always developing; present states are changing; we always hope for the better, but in the same breath as the real world develops, so must our ‘maps’ and models. To ensure we all understand fully let’s consider the fact that in 1969, a map of New York City will be hugely different to a map from 2019, 50 years later.
Physical models of our realities change, so it should be understood that mental models of our realities are subject to change as well.
We are always creating mental models of the world. The information available is too vast, and there is too much stimulus for us to create a model and keep it for an extended amount of time.
So, how do we go about updating our mental models? Well, now that we’re aware that we have them, we can start by noticing what we might otherwise miss, and ask questions of our assumptions and the stories we tell ourselves about who and what we are, who other people are to us, and how the world works around us. It would be sensible for us also to look at where our own mental models have come from.
We all have unique ‘mental maps’ of the world we live in. Our mental maps are created from the experiences we encounter every day and perception adds color to those experiences. As we all sense things in unique and personal ways, our mental maps are similar to our fingerprints. No one has the same fingerprint, and no one has the same mental map.
Mental Maps are our subjective perceptions of the world as we see it. Our mental maps are personal maps of the same world. The world is massive, complicated and truly beyond total comprehension.
What is our personal mental map? We form opinions, conclusions, and assumptions on a daily basis. Our beliefs are formed from these maps, we form attitudes, and see things from perceptions of things that happen to us.
As human beings, we automatically consider all of this information that stimulates our senses. This is what forms the complicities of our reality and from this forms our personal beliefs.
“External information that is consumed by us is filtered through these core beliefs. In essence, this is our ‘mental map.”
We understand and feel that we are objective as we see things as they are, especially as NLP Practitioners. We might not be as objective as we want to be as we are all conditioned to accept the world not as it is, but as we are.
With every decision we make, we do so acting per our awareness. If our awareness is limited or faulty, our thoughts and actions will follow suit. Is it a surprise that different people offer different witness accounts of the same incident?
To be the best possible version of ourselves, it is crucial that we expand the perception of our reality.
When we believe in something so strongly, we are keen to call it the truth and will go to great lengths to proclaim it. In turn, we can also find ourselves becoming defensive about our beliefs when they conflict with the beliefs of others. Without the correct training and practice, our minds are not capable of holding conflicting beliefs, it will without training, cause internal conflict.
We all have a different perspective from each other. The observations we make are primarily used to support perceptions, experiences, assumptions, and beliefs however random or specific.
Primarily our observations are influenced by what we want to see. For example, picture a group of friends that are walking down a busy main street; they will all see and notice different things despite all heading to the same destination. One person in the group may look in the shop windows, another may focus his or her attention on the opposite sex as they walk by, and another might miss it all as their attention is fixed on something on their phone. Same street, different perceptions.
Our mental maps can be so different. As we occupy the same world, it is important for us to realize that our maps are in fact different from each other, doing so helps us to communicate more effectively. We all instinctively communicate using our own map without a thought for the map of the other, and when this happens, communication breaks down.
Appreciating that other people have different maps from us will help avoid stress and frustration. This will also serve as a conduit for improved communications between each other.
Our maps can improve and expand through new experiences and new learnings. In doing so, we can change our attitudes towards a specific thing, a person or an idea. We can call this life experience, but it is not dependant on age, it is maturity that drives our willingness to consider perspectives that differ from our own. In one way, the more mistakes we make, the more we can learn from them, from these lessons learned and life experiences gained, our mental maps become more and more detailed and more representative of the ‘world map.’