It is not what happens to us that shapes our perceptions. It is how we understand what happens to us–how we experience and interpret and process what happens to us. The same thing happens to two different people with two different results. “The fire that melts the butter hardens the steel.”
Many of us go through life using mental programming that was largely developed in our childhood. We react to the world and the events and circumstances of our life based on an already established thought set, and we think little about how and why our brains are perceiving and interpreting what is happening to us. Our perceptions, based on who we are, are unchanging, and so is our perspective. This prohibits our contining growth and brings about old behaviors and attitudes that are often negative and self-defeating.
Each of us has a unique perspective that we apply to our experiences. This perspective determines our reaction and response. This perspective can be changed, resulting in possibilities for growth and positive thinking, but it is easier to keep the perspective we already have. Changing our perspective is hard work and requires that we rethink things we thought were established and set. Changing perspectives means we have to stay open to the possibility of change and growth and blessing and challenge.
Positive thinkers have flexible brains that allow them to experience and interpret life in positive ways. Such flexible brains constantly reprocess life’s events to update perceptions and perspectives.
Is it time for a perception check? When you have thought something and reacted accordingly, only to find that what you thought was incorrect?
Perhaps you have experienced faulty perceptions from the reverse side–someone falsely accused you based on inadequate or inaccurate perceptions. Remember that we think about (perceive) events and people according to what we are, not according to what they are. Your experience probably reflected a problem on the part of the “perceiver” more than on the part of the “perceived.”