How Are You Separating Yourself?

One of the brilliant things about our minds is the way it is capable of categorizing experiences, ideas, and objects. We learn to categorize things in our environment to help us make "short cuts". So, when I see a round, red object, I quickly can identify if it's an apple, a tomato, or a Christmas ornament. This helps in many ways - it helps us to know what is safe and what's not safe. I can bite into an apple with no fear that it's actually a glass ornament meant for a pine tree. It also helps us to make decisions more quickly. If I'm making pizza, I'd rather be able to quickly identify the items in my "pizza" category, as opposed to getting constantly pulled in millions of directions by an uncategorized mind.

However, this tendency to categorize also leads to a lot of mental pitfalls. One of the biggest is stereotyping - rampant in U.S. culture. We identify certain physical qualities about a person and then put that person into a category of what we've learned to associate with those qualities. This can lead us to behave in ways that are hurtful, harmful, or even simply limiting. Stereotyping leads us to generalize and make assumptions about the intentions, capabilities, and qualities of people we might not even know.

Categorization can also serve to pulls us farther away from people in our environment through assumptions about what is a "right" fit for me. As humans, we often have a desire to belong. In searching to fulfill that desire, we may seek people that we feel are in similar categories as us. However, this will automatically screen out lots of people that may enrich our lives. We can do this with foods, activities, and experiences, too. We often have beliefs about "who I am" and "what I like" that can really constrain our willingness to try new things and meet new people.

Remember, this image is really only a man-made image:

Those lines aren't really there. Those dividers, those categorizations, are not true, innate aspects of the Earth. In truth, this is what our world looks like:

Practice recognizing when your mind is categorizing for you - and ask yourself, are the lines I'm drawing between myself and others helpful in this circumstance? Categories are helpful in living our daily lives, but when they severely limit our willingness to get out of the story we've written for ourselves and the lines we've decided apply to us, that's when it's time to really look at whether or not we want them sticking around.