I think one of the most important traits a person should have when they interact in the world is self-awareness or personal perception. I don’t have empirical evidence or anything but it surprises me the number of people I’ve encountered who either are not self-aware or have a slightly distorted sense of reality. Now, I don’t live in a glass house, perceivably someone could think the same thing about me but when personal perception goes bad what do you do?
Try to reel them back in?
“I have a slightly different take on that, would you like to hear it?”
Give the person more rope?
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Do nothing?
*Big “I’m just saying” shrug*
How do you teach self-awareness? Supposedly there are 6 types of perception:
- How I perceive myself
- How I perceive others
- How I perceive others, perceiving me
Now take this thinking and do the reverse for the other person interacting with you.
- How they perceive you
- How they perceive themselves
- How they perceive you, perceiving them
That’s a lot of perception.
I recently had an encounter where the person just got it all wrong. [I’m still rubbing my forehead even as I type this]. In reality perceptions shape our expectations and where there are expectations entitlement usually follow. This person felt entitled to tell me something and I felt obligated to correct her. *Finger snap* When this happens, I usually don’t look to the deities on my left and right shoulders, I look to Spirit – my higher consciousness. Spirit has never let me down, I instinctively follow her – no questions asked.
Your higher consciousness provides clues, so you’ll know if the person would be open to feedback or try to hunt you down in a drunken stupor. But I digress. So as I assessed the situation after the interaction, I looked to Spirit and asked the philosophical question: What should I do? Should I tell her? She’s dead wrong, do I correct her? Telling her would be the right thing to do, right?
And when I looked to Spirit for the answer, she gave ME an “I’m just saying” shrug and handed me some rope.
