Have you ever had a disagreement with someone and then realized you both had the same honourable intention, yet you were seeing it in a different way?
Or maybe you feel someone has wronged you in some way, yet that same person seems to get on well with everyone else.
There is a powerful concept called perception and when our perception is consciously serving us, it gives us the ability to make decisions that help us achieve what we want.
If we don’t have conscious awareness of our perception however, which the case with most of us most of the time, then it can seriously get in our way.
A few years ago I worked with a lovely client, let’s call him Jed. He came to me to up-level his business and as we worked together it came to light that he had a colleague he found incredibly annoying.
The thing was this colleague had an interest in his business and a role in helping him up-level and even though Jed didn’t like working with him, he knew he had to find a way to make it work. He found this guy bossy, self-interested and condescending, and this perception was really getting in the way of him achieving what he wanted.
When he became consciously aware of how he was creating his perception and how it was serving him, then he was able to see his colleague in a different way. Because of this his feelings towards him changed from annoyance to compassion and this gave him the ability to begin taking his business to where he wanted it to be.
Perception has the power to create wars, it also has the power to create peace and when we bring conscious awareness into this, it gives us the power to turn it around.
Become consciously aware of your emotions
Our perceptions create our emotions and when our perception is an unhelpful one, our emotions will feel negative. Tony Robbins calls emotions like annoyance, anger, frustration and resentment, action signals. What he means by this is we need to change something, and this isn’t about changing the other person it’s about changing something within ourselves. Use your emotions as a signal and the minute you become consciously aware of how you are feeling, you are ready for the next step.
Notice the questions you are asking yourself
We are all asking ourselves questions all the time, it’s the way we humans communicate with ourselves. The thing is if our emotions feel negative, then we are more often than not asking ourselves questions like “why did they treat me like that?”, “why did he do that for them and not for me?”, or “why did that happen to me?” and questions similar to these. The answers we give ourselves to these questions are definitely not at all helpful and are more often than not limiting views of ourselves. This really causes us to get in our own way. Become consciously aware of the questions you are asking yourself and then you are ready to start turning it around.
Start asking yourself resourceful questions
Because our perceptions affect the way we feel about something or someone then its important to first of all look at how we can change the way we are seeing something. This begins with changing the internal questions we are asking. When we ask ourselves questions that challenge our current perception, it helps us turn it around. So instead of “Why did they treat me like that?” ask yourself “What am I not seeing yet?”, “What else could this be?” and a really powerful one is “What am I making this mean about me?”. Then turn it around.
What I have found over the years working around people, both in my current coaching business and in previous roles is that nothing is rarely what it initially seems. When we are prepared to challenge ourselves to be conscious around this and learn the real lessons from it, then we start to grow and achieve from a really powerful place.
If you are ready to shift your perceptions in a powerful way so you can achieve what you want, then working with a coach can help you get there much faster. Contact me on success@debjohnstone.com.au, I would love to connect with you.
Note: Client names and details are changed to protect client confidentiality.