I was listening to a podcast from This American Life called “Batman”

Part of the podcast is about a man, Daniel Kish who is blind and uses a self taught tongue clicking technique to navigate his surroundings.  Because of his type of sonar method, he hikes, rides bicycles and independently moves through his life fluidly like a sighted person.  While a majority of the world thinks what he does is amazing, Daniel thinks that society’s expectations of blind people are far too low.  

When you lighten someone’s load, you don’t give them a chance to expand. – Daniel Kish

Research psychologists have have proven that thoughts affect others’ behaviors  Your thoughts affect your body language and energy and in turn affect your surroundings.  While my expectations won’t change a blind person’s ability to see as a seeing person does, my expectations can limit or expand their functioning in the world.  Daniel Kish believes that if society would raise its expectations, more blind people could “see” and move around the world more efficiently, independent and with confidence.  In fact, Daniel does see images in his mind.  Images exist behind the eyes and are a result of mind construction via the visual cortex.  When Daniel clicks and gets auditory feedback, his visual cortex lights up the same as a sighted person.  He processes most of the areas except color and brightness.  So, Daniel can see without eyes, because visual areas of the brain are fired up by sound and touch.   Scientifically this is proven, society however views blind people as unable to see, therefore unable to function the same as sighted people.  Limited expectation limits.

This got me thinking about how much my biases and expectations do or don’t affect my outcomes as well as others.  How do my expectations affect my boxers?  It’s not that if I expect every boxer who comes through the door to be at a U.S. level that it will be so.  But, what biases of mine are influencing and preventing my boxers’ skills from developing to their fullest abilities.

Every boxer knows how powerful subconscious body language is.  Many fights are won and lost during the boxers’ interactions at weigh ins through body languages and energetic exchanges.  It’s difficult to stay present with your deeper thoughts, your body language and others.  But the skill to catch your deeper thoughts is critical because you can catch hidden expectations.

I’ll be experimenting with learning more about my expectations and seeing what outcomes occur.  I will study how my expectations influence my body language, motivations and actions.  I want to get out of the way and make room for each and every boxer to reach higher skill levels.

How can you take on expectation, bias and influence?


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