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32 Principles That Lead To Happiness |
Perception Is Reality It is a cliché, but perception is reality... at least for the perceiver. Yet this is dangerous for our happiness because our perception can easily be manipulated. And therefore we leave ourselves at the mercy of the manipulator. Everything in life depends entirely on perception. The man in the story above was happy at the scene described to him, but it wasn’t what actually happened that made him happy… it was what he thought was happening. If you took five people at random and showed them the same picture each would probably remember different things and have a different interpretation of what was happening. This is due to our perceptual filters. I remember a man I once worked with in a temporary job, while I was at college. He illustrates this concept so vividly. Whatever happened or was said he could only see the bad in. He and I were in the same position. We’d both started working on a temporary basis in the summer. Christmas, the Company’s busy time was coming up, but we were under no illusions that we were only there on a day to day basis for as long as they needed us. John worked frantically. After a couple of weeks the manager congratulated him on being the most productive worker the previous night. He also added that they were busy and there was a good chance of being kept on until Christmas. I interpreted this as encouragement. John shared his interpretation. ‘He must think I’m a right ****, he tells me I’m doing well, then in the next breath he’s telling me I’m out the door at Christmas’. This was in July and he’d had no promise of work beyond the week. Yet John couldn’t seem to allow himself to feel good about anything. Instead he focused on the negative… the subtle reminder that he was only there on a temporary basis. He rapidly became known for his ability to see the worst in anything. People used to tell him things, just to see how he’d react. The only time John was pleased was when something bad happened to someone else. He was so afraid and had so little faith in himself that he needed others to fail to feel equal or superior to them. One of the temporaries who’d been there for two years compared to John’s six months was taken on permanently. He told John. John’s reply was ‘Well that’s me ********* then’. There was no congratulations, no good feeling. I saw him later and he poured out his bitterness, feeling he should have got the job. John thought he worked harder, which was true. However the culture at this company was such that jobs generally went on the basis of how long you’d been there. Unless you did something to upset someone. Rather than accept this and take it as encouragement that sooner or later he would be taken on, John saw it as a personal rejection. John had always been the hardest working, but then along came someone younger and faster. He hated him. He got on with the Manager. John believed that his face didn’t fit. He thought he would be seen as too old to be given a job. It became a game to feed John’s fears. He took in everything negative because it fitted with what he believed. This worked him up into anger and bitterness about everything. After a while we got fed up of winding John up and began avoiding him. Just talking to him was draining. He rowed with the Managers and Supervisors over petty things that only meant a lot to him. This isolated John. As a result he pushed himself down the list by antagonizing the Management. A quiet patch hit in February and we were laid off for a couple of days. Then they only needed three of us for a few days. John through his fear had made himself disliked and was not picked among the three to come back. However he was so frightened that perhaps he was the only one to be laid off that he turned up at work in his own time to check. When he saw other temporaries there he flipped and rowed with the Supervisor. John created the very outcomes he feared by distorting situations to match his pessimistic beliefs. A demonstration that perception is reality. Whatever your circumstances in life are they are created by you through your perception. Imagine that all the possibilities of life were spread across 30cm ruler. Now think of all the experiences humans have reported. Out of body experiences… mystic visions… psychic phenomena… seeing aliens… lifting a car to free a trapped child and thousands more. What we as an individual see and understand about life is equivalent to a 1mm groove. In any given situation we have hundreds of options. Often though we become so stuck in our groove that we only see one or two options. So we do not think it is possible to experience all the types of experiences listed above. And they aren’t while you are stuck in the groove you are currently in. But if you changed the groove… you change the possibilities you can see. Next: Change Your Perception Start Book To Put Excitement Back Into Your Life
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