Your Perception Of Others Is Holding You Back

How often in your life have you engaged with someone and formed a perception of that person in a very short space of time?

Often, we base this perception of sketchy evidence at best and whilst it often feels so real in our minds, that we have read this person like a book; its bullshit.

What’s even worse is we often take our perceptions of one person or event and allow them to shape our perspective of people on a much wider scale, creating rules for our interactions that only hold us back.

• In any situation at best your perception is based on your 50% of the conversation. If you can’t read minds you don’t know what the other person is thinking, feeling or wanting. Unless of course, you ask them.

• Your perception of some is only somewhat relevant to a particular person, at a particular moment in that particular environment. As soon as any of these factors change your perceptions of that person become outdated.

Step 1 – Become uncomfortable with your current thinking.

How many of your beliefs are based on one or two reference experiences, that have come to define your how outlook? In your mind, they have become irrefutable ‘facts’ of life.

How often do you ignore evidence that goes against your perceived belief? A process called confirmation bias whereby we choose to ignore evidence that doesn’t support our version of the story.

How often has your preconceived ideas of someone led you to fortune tell conversation or outcome before you have even begun? What effect does this have on your ability to create in the moment genuine connection?

By embracing curiosity about your own perceptions and how they formed you can start to create cognitive dissonance within your own mind. Your hard and fast belief in the factual nature of your perceptions is undermined by your own self-exploration of the validity behind them and the barriers they have created for you in connecting with others.

Step 2 – Acceptance

Embrace the idea that your perceptions about others have no more validity than their perceptions of you.

Treat every person and every conversation as unique with its own set of circumstances. What happened before has no bearing on what’s happening at that moment unless you allow it to.

Understand that sometimes your perceptions of others will come true but this is not your ability to predict the future, simply that if we guess enough, sometimes we guess right.

Step 3 – Action

The uncomfortable part is almost always the action part, but this is the most important part of challenging your preconceived ideas about connecting with people. If you have a belief then go out and explore it, I like the rule of 100. If I act in a certain way and 99 people out of a 100 respond in a similar manner then it’s a pretty good indicator of the way people see my behaviour. It still leaves one person however who responds differently and that one person might be all you need to create the most powerful connection of your life.

Remember you always have the power of choice and how you respond to a particular situation. This goes for the way in which you choose to perceive people and events around you. If you wish to see the world in shadow then you can, or you can choose to see it in the light. Allowing your perceptions of past interactions to dictate your future ones is devaluing yourself and person you talking with at that moment. Better to focus on the present and treat that person as a unique individual who can only be understood through honest curiosity.

Seek opportunities to challenge your preconceptions of others your life will better for it.