How to step off your map: a view from Edinburgh’s Old Town

Walking around the Old Town of Edinburgh is a powerful reminder of the limitations of maps.

There’s no way that any map can do justice to the criss-crossing streets, the rabbit’s warren of narrow closes, the dizzying effect as you look over a bridge and see the dark chasm of another road running deep beneath your feet.

There’s a constant shift in experience: from darkness to sudden bursts of light, from the noise of taxis
pounding the cobbles to the silence of a deserted alleyway, from the bustle of modern shops and cafes to the quiet history of narrow lanes that haven’t changed in centuries…

The reality you think you know is always changing, always richer, more intriguing, more full of possibilities than you had seen or believed or remembered…

And this is a metaphor that works at so many different levels. “The map is not the territory” is one of the key presuppositions of NLP. It’s saying that we do not know what reality is, we just construct a “map” of that reality based on our senses, beliefs and past experience. The map can never be completely accurate – it is just a representation, not reality itself.

And often our maps have limitations that have crept in from habits, from experience, from limiting beliefs. Remembering that the map is not the territory – that the territory is more, is different, unknown, possible – can be a really powerful way to open up choices and give us greater freedom of action.

And you know sometimes you can step off your map just by going for a walk. Maybe somewhere new – a bit of the territory that you haven’t explored before. Or somewhere really familiar – but with different eyes. You might be pleasantly surprised with what you discover…

Or just change one of your ingrained routines. Do something different, go somewhere new.

When I was out walking yesterday I went somewhere different for coffee. A place I’d walked past hundreds of times but never been inside. Just pushed open the door and – well to be honest it was like entering another world. The narrow entrance hid a huge seated area with views of the Castle to die for. Full of young people, students, foreign visitors: reading the paper, posing, flirting, exchanging ideas, enjoying cafe society. A whole other universe, right off my map but just the push of a door away.

So why not try stepping off your map this week… You might be amazed what you find – and what other possibilities open up before you…