What’s your perception?

Have you ever had a situation where someone got upset with you and when you finally found out why, you were completely dumbfounded? You might not even have known that they had been upset at the time. But later, something upended their cart and all the pent up emotions started gushing forth. They start recalling some event in the past where you hurt them and the details of their story do not line up with your recollection of the same event.

You don’t know whether to tell them you’re sorry or whether to tell them they’re completely nuts! You wonder how in the world do they have such a different memory of the event than you do. In fact — your recollections are that they did something to hurt your feelings.

Sound familiar? I thought so. It happens all the time in relationships whether personal, social, or work related. Each person carrying around hurt feelings about what the other person said or did to them. The interesting thing is, if there was a third party involved they would more than likely have a somewhat different version all together.

PERCEPTIONS

So why does this happen? It is called “Perceptions.” We all have them. But what creates them? Perception is individual. It is the way you think about or understand someone or something through the senses (vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell). Heredity, culture, needs, peer group, interests, and expectations all influence our perception.

Not to get too deep, but perception is the way we interpret the information we sense. The way we interpret the world in many ways dictates our sense of reality. Even if our senses are sharp, if our perception is skewed we will not understand the information we sense.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you had a disagreement with a friend one day and it was not the first disagreement that you and she had ever had. You decided to take the high road and apologize. And because in todays world everyone texts back and forth you texted her the next morning and said, “You were sorry”. Expecting a response from her in short order you were surprised not to hear back from her. It’s evening now and you have still not heard from her. What do you think your perception of that would be? It would probably depend on your perception of that person and the relationship.

First scenario — You believe your friendship is in good standing so you wait it out and give that person the benefit of the doubt, thinking that they must have a very good reason for not getting back with you yet.

Second scenario — You believe the relationship is on rocky ground so you start imagining that she is intentionally ignoring you causing you to stew all day about it. You might even start thinking of other things in the past regarding this person and feed on your perceptions (negative) of this person. Even to the point of starting a whole new argument in your mind with this person.

Can you see how your perceptions can have an influence on your relationships? Where we get into trouble is when we confuse perception with reality — we mistake how we understand something for the way that they really are. Even though our thoughts and feelings seem real to us, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are true.

What is Reality?

Reality is the true state of things. It’s how things really are, whether we perceive them to be as such or not. Things in themselves are basically neutral. WE are the ones who supply the perceptions and our beliefs about them. Reality supersedes both our expectations and beliefs.
How OUR reality appears to us says a lot about our perceptions.

So let’s go back to the two scenarios above. The reality of the delayed answer back from the friend is that she fell ill during the night and she took some medicine to help her sleep and she had put her phone on silent so as not to be disturbed. She still didn’t feel well the next day and because she didn’t feel well enough to call anyone she forgot that her phone was on silent. It didn’t occur to her at all that anyone was trying to get a hold of her.

So if you put yourself in the first scenario you went about your day as normal. You didn’t even give it a second thought why your friend had not answered you back. However, if you put yourself in the second scenario you spent the whole day in turmoil and had probably worked yourself right up into an unnecessary dither by incorrectly interpreting her delayed answer as a deliberate action on her part. Because of your already negative perception of your friend and relationship with her, the delayed response just confirmed your beliefs even though they were wrong all along.

Unfortunately, we do not often realize how our perceptions can cloud reality. They seem like one and the same to us . Our perception is important to recognize because it is the driving force behind our reactions to people and events in our lives.

It is hard to change our perceptions because we see and feel things from our perspective and have a hard time seeing from the other persons perspective. Something that sticks in my mind is I remember popping over to my neighbors house one day and as I was talking with her I happened to look out her window. I stopped talking to her all of a sudden because I was so caught off guard to see my house from across the street. My house looked so different to me from that angle and I remember thinking, “Oh, this is what my house looks like from over here, this is how she sees my house”.

We would do well if we could keep that analogy in our minds when it comes to relating with others. That depending on where you stand, you will see some things a certain way or see some things that somebody else might not, and vice versa. So, knowing that we can change our perspective, it stands to reason that the perception can change along with it. Thus, perception is far from a fixed truth.

If you believe that you might have formed some unhealthy perceptions in your life that are causing you to struggle with relationships and you need someone to help you sort out how you ended up with them and work toward finding the peace of reality please call me at (616) 516-1570.