Hi guys welcome to episode 257 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast!
I was running a month or so ago and it was super hot, and I was kind of running out of steam when I saw a sign in a yard of one of our neighbors about a mile and a half away from our house, The sign was a political sign and it actually said keep Heidi Kuhn in congress or something like that.
But that’s not what I saw, I saw what I wanted to see and that was “Keep Heidi running”. My brain at first was jolted and was like who would put that signup??? That’s crazy but almost immediately, I recognized what it actually said and I had a good laugh at myself Like someone would make a sign, know when youre going to run and then put that sign in their yard for your benefit. Quite literally .01% chance of that happening…..
So my perception was one thing, and the reality was something all together different.
Another time, and let me set the tone here, it’s it’s upcoming election season locally and there are those little camping signs everywhere, so that’s why I have these signs in my head, but anyway I saw a sign that said elect Linda Hodges, and I thought oh I wonder if that’s the Linda Hodges I went to school with, but almost immediately it registered that the sign said Lincoln not Linda, my brain just pulled from memory the only Hodges I knew and completed the sign before it registered that reality was different, which made me wonder how many times I do that and don’t realize it.
Once again my perception and reality were really two different things. Now these were harmless perceptions that even if I hadn’t noticed actual reality was different from my perception it wouldn’t have made a difference but how often do we have a perception that we SWEAR is our reality and it really matters?
It’s important to remember that we come at life from our perspective and only our perspective.
From our perspective, life revolves around us and we tend to think that everything other people do revolves around us as well.
When in reality, that has the same chance of being true as someone putting a sign up in their yard specifically to motivate me to keep running. If your life revolves around you, and it does then you can assume that the same goes for the other people in your life, and it does.
I think this is one thing that if we try to remember will help us tremendously in life and especially in our relationship.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this, it’s all perfectly normal but if we know we’re doing it then we may start seeing patterns or ways where we are doing it and it’s not serving us.
It’s really startling when you actually do a little research of how individualized each of experience is. I sometimes will be driving around and see other people in their cars and think wow there are billions of people on the planet who wake up every day and live their life and their life revolves around them just like mine does around me.
SO why does this even matter? How does that affect your listening right now? Well, our stories and our perceptions are creating our life as we know it. They are the reason we do what we do. It also really affects our relationships with other people.
Our past experiences influence us more than we know.
I was raised in a religion where other churches were the Devi’s house and in our literature preachers with the long black coats and the little white collar were depicted with fire and anger and terrifying scenarios. My husband was taken back when I told him that when I see a preacher wearing those outfits, even today I still want to step back or steer clear of them because we were raised to fear them. So a scenario that would normally be very comforting to a lot of people is actually very uncomfortable for me. We carry those ingrained experiences deeply, some of them are very difficult to overcome, but they can be overcome of course.
How does this affect our relationships with other people? Well, for one thing, we tend to think that what other people do or think is based on us, when often that couldn’t be further from the truth. What another person does is based on their prior experiences not on you. This even goes for your parents. Your mom and dad have their own perceptions too. Ive talked a lot about how I felt like my mom and dad were pulling away when in reality, my mom thought we were too busy for her and that we didn’t have time for them. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. We were both taking our perception and assigning it to reality. Reality was there was a lack of communication, and I’m open to that being mainly on my part, and a lot of that was because I had some pretty powerful coaching.
Our perception IS our reality if we aren’t open to the actual reality. My husband had a class where they were talking about aviation and behavior and they did a survey where pilots were asked to rank themselves agains their peers….turns out 90% of the pilots surveyed thought they were in the top 10% of their peer group. This is where your perception can get you in trouble, obviously, 90% of pilots are not in the top 10%…it’s mathematically impossible. It’s good to have confidence but you don’t want to have false confidence. Some of those pilots’ perceptions MAY be a little off from actual reality.
How often is your perception off from actual reality? How often have you created an alternate reality from your perception? How often does your perception include thinking you can read someone’s mind? How often does your perception influence your actions?
Our perceptions influence our actions all the time.
If we had a bad experience with a waiter at a restaurant, our perception of that restaurant may be affected, it may even cause you to not return to that restaurant again. I had food poisoning years ago at one of our favorite restaurants, it’s been 3 years and we still haven’t returned. That’s pretty influential.
Never underestimate the power of your perception and how it affects everything you do.
So my takeaway from this is
Recognize your perception is strictly your reality, not necessarily actual reality Like my
experience with being fearful of a robed preacher
Don’t hold on too tightly to your perceptions because they may be wrong (like the way my brain
was reading the signs)
Always be open to modifying your perception if evidence shows otherwise (like me accepting
my role in miscommunication with my family)
Often times our perception is off, and the problem with that is
Our perception will be our reality unless we are open to actual reality
So the answer is YES, your perception is your reality, but it doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s reality or even actual reality and that’s a pretty powerful way to become really self-aware…..and that’s what we want.
I love you guys I’ll talk to you in a few days!
