I used to subscribe to the perceived logic of the phrase “Perception is Reality”. How you perceive a situation is the reality of the situation as experienced by you. I bought in so deep that I led customer centric teams with this philosophy at the forefront.
The problem is, I was wrong.
Perception is not reality.
Perception is the Reality you have chosen to believe. In all fairness, your perception may be dead on or it may be completely off base. Recently, the number of times I have seen people sticking to perceptions that are completely off base has been mind numbing.
The danger of this philosophy has become clearer to me over the last several months across multiple experiences but really crystalized this morning while listening to the Huberman Lab podcast with Dr. David Yaeger on Growth Mindset.
“The way you interpret something then affects how you respond to it. If I see someone, and they are doing something innocuous, but I interpret it as a threat…Do I call the Police? Do I run away? That is my interpretation that is cause [the response]”
– Dr. David Yeager
Perception causes the response.
If we hold on to a perception that is not actually rooted in truth it can (and likely will) lead to a response that is reaction to a false narrative.
So what do we do about it?
We question our perspective. We look at things from the other side. We ask questions like ‘why’, ‘so what’ and ‘what if’?
We have to be ok challenging our own perspective and attempt to look at the world through others.