Perception is nothing but the selected inputs we take in through our senses, how we organise it, and interpret it into something solid and meaningful. The way we perceive people, things and situations is subjective, variable, and constantly changing. This mainly depends on our state of mind, time, conditioning, and motivation.
State of mind
Our state of mind includes our moods (whether we are tensed or relaxed), attitude, biases, prejudices, intellect, knowledge, and so on. If someone stamps your feet when you are chilling out on the beach and apologises, you will definitely smile and say it's alright. But if you are in the waiting room of a hospital waiting for a sick friend's report, then the same action will just get a nod.
Time
The time of the day when we perceive something makes a lot of difference to our perception and how we see things. You may enjoy someone playing music in the evening, but the same may be irritating at midnight.
Conditioning
Family, education, religion, society, and environment have their own roles to play in the formation of ones personality.
Up to an age, we do not have much control over the inputs received and conditioning plays a huge part in our perception.
Motivation
When we are motivated emotionally or vice versa, we tend to perceive what we want to perceive.
The truth
Unlike what we think, it is not entirely how or what we perceive that matters. It is the process that follows that makes the difference.
The mind organises the information taken in by our senses and translates it into a structure or an image, which is supposed to be meaningful. But unfortunately it is not always meaningful or even real.
What happens during the process?
The major hiccups lie in our mind. How we interpret what our senses perceive depends on our thoughts.
Most of them are stored in our subconscious as memory, which is the result of various experiences and conditioning. We keep adding to it every day and ever so often, filling it up. These then act as catalyst.
The danger is that our subconscious stores both what we need and what we don't.
Being but humans, we normally use emotions to translate our experiences (our own and what we see or hear) into our thoughts. And these thoughts then interpret our perceptions and give them life. One thing we have to realise is that the thoughts and images in our subconscious cannot differentiate between what is relevant and irrelevant while interpreting the perceptions. This is what creates confusions.
So certain interpretations need not be real or suitable to our perceptions. But all our responses and reactions are real, which are purely based on these interpretations.
Hence we find ourselves constantly swinging between reality (our perception), imagination (our interpretations) and reality (responses and reactions).
(The writer is a transformation expert and can be contacted on babita@persona24carats.com/
www.persona24carats.com)
