Recently a city councilman from Texas made an impassioned plea for kids, especially gay kids, who are challenged by bullies to recognize that the pain they face growing up in those kinds of circumstances is temporary and that “it does get better”. I think this is a great reminder that what really matters in our life, isn’t the reality of things – but our perception of how things are.
We know and experience our world only through the perceptions we have. There is no other way for us to filter this information. Each of us has the ability to choose how we perceive any event in our life, and we exercise this power of choice in every circumstance, every moment we breath. No matter what the situation, we choose our reaction, assigning meaning and value to an event. I always like the Landmark Education quote, “Humans are ‘Meaning Making Machines'".
Once we start to live in this model – really live in it, not just a fleeting intellectual awareness, it gives us all kinds of power to begin to determine the nature and quality of our experiences. No one can make us mad, or happy, or sad…we choose those responses to the stimuli offered by others – but ultimately our choice about what to feel, rests with us. And it’s all about choices. I am the boss of me.
A lot of us don’t do this…we give our emotional wellbeing over to others – who are, for the most part, more than happy to take it. Instead of discovering “what’s up” for ourselves, we let others dictate our feelings – and this happens on all kinds of levels. From a more global view – where we might let Fox News or associated pundits determine what we think, to letting ourselves be victimized by the anger or anxiety issues of people with whom we are close.
It’s fine to listen to opinions (mine included) – as long as those opinions only “inform” our creation of perceptual filters. What happens too often, in my humble opinion, is that we’re lazy – or we want to belong, or we just think we’re too busy to think through things for ourselves. And we end up letting the opinions of others replace our own thinking.
Some of this comes from early training about the value of questioning. We may have grown up in a home where it wasn’t considered a good idea to “question” whatever was said. In coaching circles, we might call that the “Why” Because I’m your mother…that’s why!” model. Sorry, but that’s not a good enough reason to abdicate my own thinking in favor of yours – and the message we send when we say that, is “don’t think – I’ll do it for you.” This is a strange training model if we want to create self-sufficient, independent, or critical thinking effective humans.
And it doesn’t matter who says what – we have to evaluate in terms of our own wonderful capacity for critical thinking – just because your Pastor, parish priest or Rabbi, a TV newscaster, or a politician says something, doesn’t make it true. Just because it’s written somewhere, and perhaps even attributed to “God”, doesn’t make it true. We need to sift through what’s said – and check it against the idea of “does this make sense?” and “what is my heart telling me about this right now?” Your guy is a great assist in the process of bullshit detecting.
“There is no reality, only perception” means that we are in control. Sure, there are some kinds of reality that are pretty reliable – gravity, taxes, chocolate…things that we don’t really need to spend a lot of time arguing about…that’s not the reality I’m talking about. More specifically I’m concerned with the realities about ourselves we live with daily, or the realities about others…how we limit ourselves by our beliefs about what we can and can’t do. And how easily we accept the beliefs of others ABOUT us concerning our potential.
We all view the world through individual filters, which influence the interpretations we give events, how we respond, and how we are responded to. “We don’t see things as they are” writes Anais Nin, “we see things as we are.” Be aware of the factors that influence the way you see the world, this allows us to compensate for them and respond with some degree of consciousness. When we continue to view the world through a filter created by past events, we are allowing our past to control and dictate both our present and your future. Our history is not our destiny.
Filters are made up of a wide range of beliefs, or ideas that have become entrenched in your thinking. Some of these beliefs are helpful – and some are limiting. Limiting beliefs are dangerous because if we treat them as fact, we will not seek, receive or process new information, undermining our capacity for creating effective change. When we "shake up" our belief system by challenging these views and testing their validity, doing a “gut check” as it were - the freshness of our perspective can be startling – and vastly expand our horizons and capacity to live an effective, loving life.
The Etymological Dictionary defines an iconoclast is a “breaker or destroyer of images” from the Late Greek word eikonoklastes. Later, an iconoclast was viewed as “one who attacks orthodox beliefs or institutions.” Today, iconoclasts like perceive things differently than other people - or maybe we just like to be annoying. Either way. This difference in perception plays out in our ideas, worldview and metaphysics - and in how we manage our fears and shadow self. It works well for me.
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