Perceiving Your Perception: It is under your control.

 

For many years, and in hundreds of books there have been countless words written about "Perception" and how it is all important especially with regard to you and the rest of the world. To put it simply it is, how you see things. But there is very little consideration on what you consider perception itself to be and to what degree you can mould the construct of perception itself.

I first this may seem like cyclical thinking because, is not perception the very act of perceiving? Yes it is but like everything else under your control. It can be moulded, adjusted if you like, and it just knowing this that allows you to consider it on a much deeper level. What is perception to you? And just how often in your daily routine are you aware of perceiving something? If you are aware of the process as it actually unfolds you can begin to really zoom in on the origins of some of your emotions as well as physical factors you are experiencing.--- Are you aware of the experience right this moment as you read this article?

Most people in North America look forward to their morning coffee. Some may even smell the aroma as they think about what coffee is to them. The very fact that they can do that is due to their perception of what the perception of coffee is. Now you can start to take this apart and look at the various stages you go through as you think of something equally wonderful. What I'm really talking about here is developing the ability to take any experience and subdivided down to smaller levels, smaller degrees and in that process consider your relationship to the event by looking at pieces of the experience. This can give one the ability to really focus in and slow things down so that what was once invisible now begins to show itself. Whether your reaction is positive or negative this way of looking at things can allow you to really take the various stages of a reaction apart and by doing so alter future reactions.

Of course you can go overboard on this and start literally "splitting hairs" going down to finer and finer details well beyond the point of being useful. Don't get that distracted by this idea. Use it only to the point where you are getting some insights out of any given experience. It might be a good idea to write or record your thoughts as you consider some aspect of perception. Then revisited a few hours later or sometime down the road. Because then I enough will happen to you in the intervening time that you are perception will be different.

This short article is only the results of myself a few days ago while waking up realizing that my perception is my own making and that like a fractal image there is infinite detail and I can take it apart as long as I find the results useful. I wish I had been recording at the time this thought occurred to me because here I am five days later and I can remember the idea for this short article but not what I was considering a moment earlier which brought the to the idea of Perceiving One's Own Perception.

Hopefully this has made some sense, and cause you to pause and reflect on something.
Have a great day.
 If video is your preferred format, then here you go. I expand on this topic a little more. As always please leave comments or ideas below or on YouTube.

Patrick Clark

Combating Your Negative Bias

 This morning I read a quote from Dostoyevsky which fits in very nicely with this topic:

"To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task."

Believe it or not everyone has a built in evolutionary based "Cognitive Negative Bias". That is, your mind, if left to its own behaviours always assumes the worst. This was right for the early human species as it saved them from becoming a predator's midday snack. However this negative bias over time became generalized and now in the modern world, it not only does it not serve us well, it actually gets in the way of physiological growth.

 It is not necessary to go into examples of negative bias, they are all too prevalent. Rather this article is meant to give you some of my own personal tools to encourage seeing a "Positive Bias" whenever possible. These are things I have learned throughout my life.

To sum them up, they are:

1.  Personal Awareness
2.  Recognizing Habitual Behaviour
3. Enjoying Effort (literally relishing in the fact that something might be hard to do.)

Every time engage in one of these behaviors, you always learn something.

 1. Most of us, including myself, spend a good chunk of our days somewhere between autopilot and grounded awareness. This is the modern survival skill, because frequently you are moving at a rapid pace juggling many things. The problem is that, it has become, for many people, a natural default state; they are slowly lose touch with themselves. In some situations even with their very character. Who they may become over time it's not quite the personality they assume. Everything can change and that includes the very essence of you.

Getting to know various aspects of yourself is critical, because it is the bedrock upon which everything else is built. No one can know everything about themselves because we are always changing, but we can definitely alter the larger and more profound aspects. So, the next time you turn on the TV, YouTube, or other entertainment media especially if it's something you do often, ask yourself to just pay attention to you to the situation you are in. What are you looking forward to? If it is a routine ask yourself what you get out of the routine? Start to take apart the situation in whatever way you want and notice the different aspects. There is so much to discover in personal awareness and it is in these moments that you can find a great many surprises. Encourage yourself to be curious. You are psychologically getting something out of every situation. Start to explore what that might be. Even negative things. What you might call a bad habit has a payoff for some part of your psychology.

2. This leads right into the next item on the list, recognizing habitual behaviours. Again you are getting something out of it. Often can be a way to avoid being aware of yourself. The problem is that habitual behaviours that don't do you any good and can waste a great deal of time getting you nowhere. So you don't benefit from the experience either positively or negatively. --- In sort they keep you stuck. So next time you're eating that big bag of potato chips and you're chewing through them at breakneck speed. Ask yourself what's going on. 

3. Just today I was working with someone who was terrified of effort. That is to say, the minute something got difficult for them, he immediately put up mental roadblocks, essentially guaranteeing that they would fail. I have seen this several times now in various people who will always say they want to learn and succeed. My belief is that it is the fear of change ultimately that is stopping them. Everything you've ever done in your life even the most automatic and unconscious things was at the very beginning, difficult. You had to learn how to gain a new skill. But somewhere along the way these people learned or told themselves that everything must conform to their way of existence or seeing the world if you prefer. If it didn't fit their model then it was by definitions "difficult" and doomed to failure. To guarantee this outcome they began to build up all sorts of behaviours to distract themselves while at the same time frustrating themselves. A guarantee the way not to benefit from learning.

Well, in order to learn you must be prepared to change and what you need to learn is that change is a good thing in this context and if something is difficult that is also a good thing. It means you're being stretched and exercised and ultimately growing. So learn to accept difficulty as a positive indicator. If the "wall" is too high, take your time and appreciate the small steps. If you are observant of your accomplishments and your setbacks you will reach the top. You will however not be quite the same person you are at the beginning of the undertaking. It is necessary to let go of the "you" you knew. It may be a very difficult thing at first and it may remain difficult. That is okay. Take the time to understand why. If it is not in your power to see why it is difficult then see if you can come to terms with the difficulty. It will be up to you whether to proceed and integrate it into the situation or to go down another route.

Don't Resist Change, Embrace It.

There seems to be a tendency for people now to insist on having the world presented to them in a way they are already comfortable with and that can lead to a lot of the above difficulty. You may have to change your behaviour. If you really want to achieve a specific goal. That means taking a look at your negative bias and indeed taking a look at the individual you have knowen for all these years who just happens to be your self.

A practical example of people resisting change while insisting they want the benefits of change without the work involved would be the following:

This happened several times every year. Either in my volunteer work or when assisting someone in my building with new equipment or purchases. They get the latest phone with all the bells and whistles. After they've had it for a few days they come to me and they ask can you make this do what I saw in the commercial? It doesn't matter what the undertaking is what the person is often really asking is "You do the work so I can have all the benefits without having to think about it.". And of course things never really work out for them because they do not understand the very future they are attracted to. Even if everything does work after it is been set up they are still somewhat frustrated because they intuitively know that they don't know what's going on. And in order to benefit from an experience you have to understand that experience. Just buying a good camera will not make you a good photographer. You must undertake learning how it works. There is no getting around this if you really want to grow.

So there we have it. The key points of my philosophy in regards to negative bias. My advice throw the negative out and do the work to get the positive in.

I have made a companion video for this article. It covers the same points and also addresses a few other aspects. If you are more comfortable learning it through multimedia then this is for you. It is about 10 minutes long.

Take care Patrick