Things aren’t always what they seem. People, situations and certain facts can end up being something very different from what we had interpreted, this shows us that not all of our judgments are correct and that not all of our assumptions fit, yet the mind has a bad habit of hastening.
Suppose these perception errors? However, we can say that all responsibility is not ours; at least consciously. The real culprit for misinterpretations is the brain; it is he who makes the decisions in autopilot, who prefers to be guided by prejudice rather than reflection.
- All of us who in one way or another dedicate our lives to mental health know that it is essential to deactivate the judgment switch and the trap of prejudice.
- If we want to be agents of change for others.
- Help to grow and heal.
- It is essential to avoid hasty labels and turn on the light of understanding.
Only an open mind, able to see with authenticity, can connect with empathy to be able to follow, facilitate the progress that the person needs because, in the end, the experience ends up showing us that not everything is what it seems at first. look, everything they tell us doesn’t end up being true.
Without a doubt, this plunges us into a state of continuous uncertainty, where we have only one option left: to let ourselves be carried away and let ourselves be discovered, in fact, it is the secret of life: to dare to walk through the doors to discover what is behind it, to assume that there are as many realities and perspectives as there are stars in the sky.
“If we are so determined to judge others, it is because we fear for ourselves. “Oscar Wilde?
Sometimes what we perceive has nothing to do with real reality, how can this happen?Are our senses being deceived? What happens is that everything we perceive, everything that is out of the mind goes through the filter of our brain, it is he who interprets everything we see and experience, who channels all events, people and circumstances through the veil of our experience, our personality and our unique nuances.
Things aren’t always what they seem, and when you find out they’re not, you’re surprised, this has happened to us all before. For example, when we see a case of bullying it’s very easy to see who the victim is and who the aggressor is, but perception needs to go further. Because sometimes the aggressor is also a victim, victim of his social and family context, of a microworld in which violence is the only type of language.
What we perceive, in fact, is not always the real reality, but the perception through the lens with which we look at the world almost every day. Does the crystal with which it is made, far from being clear and transparent, have the tone of our previous experiences, emotions, prejudices, interests and cognitive distortions?
Our mind has integrated into it a vast industrial area of hypotheses, irrational patterns, preconceived ideas and prejudices that we are not aware of. If we ask who put them there, the answer is simple: ourselves.
Daniel Kahneman, the renowned Nobel Nobel Economics psychologist in 2002, reminds us in his books and works that people are made up of hundreds of cognitive prejudices, that is, we interpret reality subjectively (and often erroneously) and start entirely from objective reality.
However, sooner or later, we realize that some things are not what they seem at first, and it’s not because we use completely misaligned biases.
The brain usually works on autopilot and uses cognitive blind spots, situations in which, far from empathizing with the point of view of others, from just observing, seeing and listening calmly and empathetically to those in front of us, we limit ourselves to judging in a hasty manner.
We don’t give time or space, and we don’t give the other something even more precious: our understanding, we get stuck in that cognitive blind spot where we are not aware of our prejudices, unfounded ideas, misinterpretations. Sometimes it takes days or days, weeks to realize that certain things aren’t always what they seem to be.
Every time we talk to someone, when faced with a new or difficult situation, we will try to perform a simple visualization exercise: model in the mind two very specific images, in the first one we will deactivate a switch (that of prejudices or thoughts that anticipate meaningless interpretations).
The second image is simple: we open a window ourselves, this great window is our mind, luminous, immense and connected to all the wonders that surround it, that feeling must inject us with a good dose of curiosity, perspective and positive spirit.
This is how we can be much more receptive to others to understand them in all their nuances, turning off the voice of the label, hypotheses, etc. This mental approach requires effort and commitment; it’s also about getting rid of the excess weight of these judgments that don’t help us understand ourselves.