Perspectives and perceptions

First Published 18 November 2021

Do we all see life in the same way?

There are so many differences in how we all experience the world around us, yet we can sometimes fall in to a trap where we just assume everyone else sees the world in exactly the same way we do.

Whether it’s colour blindness or the way our eyes perceive different colours, to different neurodiversity’s – when I first learned that people could visualise things that weren’t there – with their eyes open… I thought, well, surely they are hallucinating!!! Little did I know that I was in the minority!  But, I’ll stop there before going down the Aphantasia rabbit hole again 🤣

We all interpret actions, words, body language, tone of voice etc in our own way and that can cause unexpected tension and or stress.  How often have you received a text message and not quite known how to take it, as many of the ‘social’ cues were missing?

As we are drawing nearer to the dreaded C word (yes – bah humbug) we may also be drawing nearer to spending time with people we might not have been in close quarters with throughout the rest of the year – and in a lot of cases that we haven’t spent much time with over the last year or two.  My suggestion would be to take a breath before assuming a comment was meant in a way that hurts – it might just be our way of viewing the world is different from theirs.  And if you need a wee boost to strengthen your tolerance levels – come book in, I have a few spaces left between now and the end of the year.

I’ll leave you with the following meme (unfortunately I don’t know who created it so can’t credit them) – so simple but oh so effective!  Neither of them are wrong but unless they look at it from the other’s perspective – they will never agree.