What is the reality of your perception?

What do you see in this picture? 

We tend to have a selective perception. We hear, see and think things that we choose to, or do we?

Our reality is of course our reality. We tend to see and hear things that only matter to us. We block/filter out all the noise and only find what is relevant to us. How does this happen and why?

As I have mentioned in my last post, we can only focus on one thing at a time, what we can pay attention to is limited to our perception.

After you make purchase of a particular car model or scooter, you tend to notice more of the same car or scooter driven by other people. This is because we choose to pay attention to something that is familiar and relatable to us.

Were people not driving that particular car model or scooter prior to your purchase? It was always there, you had no reason to notice it. Our reasoning dictates our perception.

Let me give you another example, look back at my post and count how many times I wrote perception. What was the number that you got? Was it 4? Okay you got that right, so how many times did I write scooter? You were not looking for scooter when I asked you to count the number of times I wrote perception so how would you know without having to look back again?

Do you see where I am going with this?

The best sales men and influencer's prime us to notice things that they want us to notice.

Zig Ziglar once said that his car sales man used this tactic on him to buy a brand new car and the way he did this was to prime him while he was at the dealership. He said to him, "I bet you will be dreaming about this beauty when you will be in bed tonight" Zig called back the next day and asked the car to be delivered to his house.

So is this post about priming or perception? Well we can say both.

Priming can be deceptive, however perception is what we choose, almost.

I have recently read an amazing book and I will be adding a few topics to my blog posts relating to this book. The book is written by someone who I aspire to, Ryan Holiday, the name of the book is "Ego Is The Enemy".

The reason why I mention this particular book is because we constantly battle our own ego most times without even realizing it, I know I do, how does this tie into perception/priming? Well our ego can elude us to filtering what is truly right there in front of us. It will make our mind up before we even see, hear or taste anything.

It distracts us from perceiving the truth. Well what is truth and what is reality?

We all wear a lens. What I see, you see differently. I don't actually mean if we are both looking at a cow we see a cow, I mean by looking at a cow I see it as a milk and meat producing gentle beast, and you may see it as a giant grass eating animal.

Our definitions are unique to our beliefs and thoughts. Our ego guides us and influences our perception of the reality, the truth, of what we believe it is or what it can be. Ego is the enemy. Ego is our deception. Even now as I am writing this I want this to be the best post, am I focused on the writing of the post or is my ego guiding me for the end result?

This quote from the book is why I wanted to mention this book, "When one becomes a student, the teacher will appear". When you are ready to see something, you will see it. When you are looking for something you will find it.

Why do we get fooled into believing that we see Jesus on a piece of toast, or the Virgin Marry on a glare in the window outside the church? One reason is because we get primed by authorities, and then follow others (Social proofing). Another reason is because we choose to see this.

We are amazing at pattern selection, watch this awesome video to understand what I mean when I say that, Why people believe in weird things.

In Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink pulls up great studies that have shown that our eyes deceive our stomach. When we are eating chicken wings and we see the left over bones we will stop eating more but when we do not see how much we ate, we will tend to eat more.

Same is true for the way menu items are written, if they sound good when we read them they will appeal to us more, as opposed to making them sound gross and real. Would you rather have deep fried squid or calamari?

Are you an idealist or a realist?

Neither of these is wrong or right, it is what you make of it that makes it so.

How do you perceive your business or job? Is it something you hate and dread? Is it a challenge? Or is it a calling?

"2 brick layers were asked to describe their work, one said he was there from 9-5 laying bricks, the other said he was building a house for god."

We all have opportunities and struggles; it is how you perceive them that matter most. Your shitty job or business can be someone else's calling. It can be your calling if you make it so. If you change/adjust your perception.

I have more to say about perception because it is such a fascinating topic, Why don't we perceive the value that we have? How can we change our perception? Can we control when we get primed? How do others perceive us? Why?

But I feel you will consider that I am monopolizing your valuable time. How did you conceive this post? I suppose that's my ego wanting to find out. Drop a comment or a like at the bottom.

As always you can find me at Karasingroup.com and on all the social platforms.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post on perception. To be continued....

Image copyright respectively by learning-mind.com, anotherporch.blogpost.com