Perception…
An interesting thing happened this morning with regards to perception. My daughter is always late for school. In fact she has always been late for everything her entire life and she is still just 15. My husband started to get irritated with her apparent lack of concern.
I suppose from my model of the world these days I can see things a different way. Call it perception perhaps, but when I studied NLP, (neuro linguistic programming) I was fascinated by the concept that we are all masters of our own destiny.
She is the most important person in her world, according to her own model of that world, as are the rest of us. It is just that we don’t acknowledge this in others and then expect the rest of the world to dance to our personal tune. We may have rules that we personally live by, but that does not mean that those rules will work for somebody else. In fact, those same rules could violate another’s values or beliefs, rendering them useless in application.
So, when we try to inflict our own rules onto another, we are in fact, expecting them to live by our own rules and not their own. How crazy is that? Some would call it control. I call it an utter waste of time, because unless you can get somebody to see value, or a reason for using your rules instead of their own, they are not going to see the point in adopting those rules. You may, via punishment, control another and have them live by your rules, but as soon as you are effectively ‘out of the way’, the original behavior returns.
So my perception is this. Upon talking to my daughter, she sees no need for her to be at school on time. She has her reasons and justifications and to be honest, from her side of the fence, it is hard to dispute. So who is right? We are all from different parents, backgrounds, educations, social conditioning, environments, so who is to say that what is right for us, is right for them?
I used to love the saying “Live and Let Live” when I was younger. Isn’t what I have just written about, the same thing? We can guide, cajole, bribe even, but at the end of the day, we are all the most important person in our own world, perceiving others who think they are the most important person too!
My point? Just notice what others do today. Watch how they are all ‘experts’ in their own model of the world according to age, experience, level of wisdom, etc. Instead of making the other person ‘wrong’ for doing what they do… look instead for motivation. Why would they do that, what is the reason behind that behaviour? If you can value them, in spite of not agreeing with the behavior, that is the highest level of unconditional acceptance you can offer another human being.
I really think, that if you look hard enough, using your own perceptive skills, you will find somebody just striving to be the best they can be, with what they already know and underneath all of that….. just wanting to be wanted.
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