Encoded Assumptions and the Circle of Tolerance

Perception of any situation is based on the boundaries we have set for ourselves. These boundaries reside in the events of our past, where we formed certain "assumptions" about the way things should be. As we grew older, many of the Assumptions became encoded in our vision of the world. Many of these assumptions may have come from the expectations or our parents or people important to us, or from social norms or even media (Movies, TV...).

Our experiences have taught us, if we act this way, we will get this result. Therefore we create for ourselves certain "Rules of Engagement". We believe that these rules will give us the results we are looking for. Our patterns of acting and decision making become based on those rules.

While some of these rules are positive and useful, others stem from compensations for what we may have perceived as failure or loss.

We have become so used to applying these "Rules of Engagement" that we may have forgotten why we created them in the first place. We often overlook what it is that we are really trying to accomplish, and we mistake a set of actions created for specific situations as laws of the universe that we must always follow, even if it is at a subconscious level!
These rules of engagement have become reactions to situations that don't go according to our "Encoded Assumptions" or the way we think or think people should be.

In the course of acting or reacting to assumptions that may not be in line with our desired outcome, we can make decisions that lead us to being unfulfilled or unbalanced and therefore, less productive as a whole.

When we expand our circle of tolerance, we expand our ability to act intelligently in any given situation instead of reacting like a lizard. If you doubt this, think of when you have been in a conversation with someone you were trying to make a point to but couldn’t get them to understand, and then 20 minutes after you left them, you thought to yourself “OH #@&!, I should have said…” This is because during the encounter you began to “React” to the situation and for all practical purposes, became a lizard. Then it took you 20 minutes to get back to being a human being where you could “think” again. When you are in the reactive centre of the brain you have NO INTELLIGENCE!

The reactive center is where your automatic rules of engagement are activated and that’s why we often keep doing the same things over and over.