Your View is Right.....Relatively Speaking
Our View of the World is Relative
This is such an important concept to understand. Two people can have a very different view of a situation depending on their core beliefs and automatic thoughts. The saying ‘Perception is Reality’ is so very true.
Simple examples of this happen every day.
A college is late to work and you scoff at them as that is just typical of them while you are working hard. Perhaps they are just lazy, but perhaps they have 4 children at home and have been up since 5am getting breakfasts together and getting the kids to school and they haven’t even had time to have breakfast themselves.
An old lady cuts you off in traffic and doesn’t even acknowledge it. You beep the horn and remonstrate that some old people shouldn’t even have their licences. Perhaps she is just a terrible driver, or perhaps her husband is in hospital and she is so distracted and upset she didn’t see you and really didn’t mean to cause any problems.
Each party to an experience brings their own perception of not only what the problem is all about, but also what the solution is, or who to blame. We spend so much time wrapped up in justifying our own perceptions that we don’t open our minds to the potential that there may be another reality.
And why do we do this? It’s our built in primal instinct. Your perception of a situation comes about because you apply everything you believe to be true about your view of the world, and if your view of the world happens to be wrong then that may constitute a threat to who you are as a person, and hence we spend time and energy reinforcing our own view of the world because its makes us feel safe and in control.
We debate, argue and defend our position and view of the world. Having an opinion is not wrong, but defending that opinion or filtered view of the world, without any thought to an alternate scenario, only causes conflict. Having the confidence in yourself to be able to accept that another person’s version of reality, is as real to them as your view and opinion is to you, is an amazingly liberating feeling.