Perception & Perspective
You can’t read social media, a magazine or feature section of the newspaper (remember those?) without coming across friendly advice on how to hack something. Health hack, food hack, memory hack, cleaning hack, work hack.
As humans, we don't mature through our age, we mature through our awareness.
Here’s a mind hack!
Perception versus Perspective.
Perception is how you particularly take in and process information. The value you attach to knowledge, material, advice, events, an awareness unique only to you. By definition perception tends to be myopic. Your perception is built over time and will not change unless intentionally interrupted or edited by you. We all see the world through the lens of our own experience.
Perspective accounts for more than perception. It is observing a circumstance outside yourself. Obtaining more of a wider worldview, which will include many (and possibly contrary) perceptions, not just your own. There is a wisdom in perspective that doesn't always exist in perception. Follow me?
Once a month I have the privilege of driving my 85 year old friend home from church back to her retirement community (about 30 miles away.) I look forward to our time in the car. We have such great conversations and giggles, and I pick her brain. Yup I am curious about her perspective on various ideas and events. Over a lifetime she has lived and experienced and learned a great deal. She has weathered loss and known great joy. Always a thoughtful contributor, she has a lot to say, she never disappoints me.
So what’s the hack? Layering perspective on perception. It adds a whole new nuance and hue to whatever you are considering. How?
Easy, take yourself out of the middle, and ask:
What else could be true?
Is this just convenient for me to believe?
How might this be different than what the surface reveals?
What does history teach me?
Who has been at the juncture to ask advice from?
What do I know about the source of this information?
What is a differing perception?
What judgements am I bringing into this?
Is it possible there are other motivations at play?
What additional information do I need?
Why would people who I respect have a different perspective?
Am I attached to a particular outcome? Why?
Understanding that life is a series of rupture and repair is perspective. We will always be figuring it out. That’s the beauty of it.
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau
If I’m honest I can look back and acknowledge the times when I felt adrift are the times I was steeped in my own perception and lacked perspective. Maybe you too?
Yes, I am a life coach, AND I search for wise people to offer me the balancing perspective, I am always learning wonderful and helpful concepts and implementing them. I hope you do too!
If you would like help going forward, gathering momentum and perspective, click the button below and let's talk.