How Perception Changes Your Attitude

We spend most of our time in a world of absolutes: what is, IS, and what isn’t, ISN’T. We believe what we can see and measure. The apple is either red, or it is not red.

But the truth may not be the truth, in some cases. I was reading a study out of Sweden about how how scientists were, in a sense, “tricking” people’s brains to change their perception by using stimulus from other senses to confuse whatever sense was being tested. For example, the test subjects were tricked into sensing that a sound originated from a certain area because a light briefly and subtly flashed on that area, so they subconsciously focused on the light, and assumed the sound came from there. The scientists discovered that just because we perceive something as being absolutely, tangibly true, it may not be reality. What is “real” can change by what we perceive.

I thought this idea had merit, so I set out to test it in my own life. See, I’ve been hearing myself a lot lately say, “Oh, man, I’m soooooo busy.” Usually when I say that, the person I’m addressing responds, “Me toooooo. Things are so craaaaaazy lately.” I decided to do a little experiment. I stopped saying “I’m so busy,” when someone asks me how I’m doing. I tell them that I’m doing great, that I just booked a new client or I’m working on something exciting for a volunteer committee I’m on. If something is bothering me, I’ll say it.

But for a few days, I stopped saying “I’m sooooooooooo busy.”

Guess what happened?

I didn’t feel quite so busy. I felt, in fact, significantly less frazzled. My calendar is just as booked – in fact, I chose to do this at a time when my calendar is arguably MORE booked than it has been in months! But I don’t FEEL so busy. I’m not focusing on the busy, I’m not talking about the busy, so the busy is minimized in my life.

Could the busy stand to be minimized in your life? Is there something bothering you or stressing you out that would be nice to have its importance shrunk down just a little bit? If so, try your own experiment like mine, thanks to the scientists in Sweden. If you aren’t busy focusing on how you are sooooooooo busy or soooooooo whatever, I promise you’ll feel less “whatever”. Put your focus elsewhere, and watch how your perception of the issue changes.

-Courtney