How Perspective Can Ignite Our Personal Power
Perception is Projection
We may have heard this saying before and I think that the most common way people interpret this statement is to say that we project our attitudes, beliefs, and meaning onto situations and people. According to Carl Jung, this is a true thought process. As we talk about self-mastery and achieving the results we want in life, I want to go a step further and explore these two thoughts:
1) We see in others what is in us: We see people through the lens that we see ourselves, which is based on our experiences, beliefs, values, emotional state, and attitude.
2) Our perception of others influences their behavior and the results we see: People live up to our expectations, in a positive way and a negative way, not necessarily because they know our thoughts. They live up to our expectations because that is the lens that we view the results from. It becomes our bias in which we judge their actions, behaviors, and the meaning we assign to it.
If we take this into consideration we can see how we can influence results purely in our thought process, in our perception. Imagine the freedom that we can unlock by taking ownership of our role in the results we see!
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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
~Rumi
Be The Change You Want To See
There was a study of a group of children in relation to perception. A new teacher was told that the ‘special needs’ teacher was unavailable so they would have to teach these students. that year the students averaged C’s with that teacher.
The next year, they gave those same students to a new teacher that was told the students were gifted and the teacher who should teach them was unavailable, so this teacher would need to teach them this year. This time the same students received all A’s & B’s. The only difference was what each teacher believed they were capable of.
The Decisive Element
Another fabulous quote that I like to reference is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from The Decisive Element. There is a part that says:
“…If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
We have two opportunities to use our personal power, our choices to influence situations so that have a better chance of getting the results we want:
- Look For The Good and Say It The Way You Want It: If we see good in others, and believe they are capable of it, they will believe in themselves and live up to our expectation of them.
- Focus Internally: If how we view ourselves and our perception of ourselves dictates what we see in others, the fastest and only sure way, that we have control over, is to focus on changing our perception of ourselves. This is the part where I say we have to go in to get it.
Exercise:
What do you want to see more of in the world? Rather than talking about how it does not exist, set an intention to be that change. Once you do this, you will begin to see more of it. What is your intention?
