‘Chapter 10: How to Change Your Perceptions’

There will be events in your life where you feel so sad, hurt or angry that it is not possible for you to reframe your perception positively. If a sudden death occurs in your family, for example, you are unlikely to perceive it as a beneficial event or a learning experience.

You can, however, choose how you will personally deal with the event. Rather than giving into feelings of sorrow for the rest of your life, you can use the situation to help other people so that they will never have to experience the same
devastating events.

Writing a book, starting a prevention campaign, giving to a charity or sharing your stories with a support group, are all ways to deal with a loss constructively. As someone who has personally experienced the event, you are in a prime position to contribute your knowledge and increase awareness amongst your peers or on a larger scale.

We live in a society where most people take themselves and their decisions very seriously. We all have images and expectations of how we want things to turn out, but when they finally happen it is important to lighten up and throw away the picture.

Since you can only control your own actions and your view of the world, there is no point in insisting that something happens in a particular way. If you are focused on the way an event is supposed to happen, rather than enjoying the way it is, you might feel disappointed instead of excited. Do not let yourself miss out on having wonderful experiences that occur in completely different ways from how you imagined.

The way we speak and act directly affects the way we feel about our experiences, because we like to have congruence between our actions and our thoughts. When you talk about something, especially to other people, your attitudes become adjusted in line with what you are saying.

The tension you feel when there is a difference between how you feel and how you speak or behave is known as cognitive dissonance. When dissonance occurs, you may, without realising it, adjust your perceptions to bring them in line with what you are saying.

During the Korean War, the Chinese communists were able to get support from many of the U.S. prisoners they held in war camps without using brutality. The way they did it was by initially persuading some prisoners to speak or write trivial statements about communism. Each time individual prisoners were brought in to see the Chinese, they were asked to say things that built on what they had previously said. Over time, many prisoners were speaking publicly about the benefits of communism. This is because the prisoners adjusted their beliefs in line with what they were saying. When the war ended, some prisoners decided to stay with the Chinese, and many more returned home full of praise for communism.

You can use cognitive dissonance to improve your own perception. For one entire day, see if you can talk only about things that you like and that you want in your life. You will find this difficult because negativity is a strong habit. Resolve to keep your conversation free of doubt, fear, anger and criticism. Speak cheerfully and optimistically about each subject you discuss and try also to keep any negative thoughts at bay. The more you speak positively, the sooner it is reflected in the way you think.

I heard a wise person say that you should never talk about your problems unless the person you are talking to will help you resolve them, and you are prepared to take immediate action to make a change. Think about it – who actually wants to hear you whinge and complain, especially if they can’t help?

I used to have a belief that if you share your problems with people then they become closer friends. In reality, while sharing some vulnerabilities with close friends might make you closer, no-one wants to hang out with a whinger. People will listen to your complaints about life, or maybe share a few of their own, but no-one will leave the conversation feeling great for it. If you talk positively to people, about the things that you love in your life, then they will do the same.

At any given time, you either have a problem or you have recently resolved one and are waiting for another to come along. It is guaranteed that another difficulty is on the horizon waiting for you. With this in mind, it is easier to learn supportive mental habits during the good times when there are fewer things distracting you. The time and effort you spend training your mind so that you can generate different points of view will pay great rewards when the next problem strikes. You will be able to deal with it much more effectively and reduce the amount of pain the problem will cause in your life.

There is a stock market strategy called pyramiding, which involves purchasing more stock as the share goes up. The result is that you end up with more shares in a performing stock, rather than putting your money elsewhere. Similarly, if you pyramid your empowering beliefs and perceptions during the good times, you can build up a strong ‘portfolio’ of mental habits. When the next problem comes along, your mental bank account will barely notice the withdrawal.

There is an Eastern saying that sums up this idea concisely: A tree will only stand up in a storm if it has a strong root network in place – it cannot grow roots as soon as the storm arrives.

As soon as you recognise that you are feeling a negative emotion, you can ask yourself some questions to help change your perception before it gets worse. Usually when you experience extreme negative emotions, such as anger or depression, it is because you fed them when they first started rather than finding a way to dispel them. Feeling negative on an ongoing basis is a barrier to your success, so it is better to pull out the weeds in your thinking before they take over.

If you have a more enduring problem, you may want to sit down with paper and a pen and ask yourself questions as a brainstorming session. You may find that your perception is wrong (and this realisation will help you to change it next time), or you may come up with a creative way of solving your problem.

Some questions that you may want to ask include:

• Are there any other ways of looking at this situation?
• Are there any alternative meanings to this situation that I may have missed?
• How might other people perceive this? (Consider people who are and are not directly involved.)
• Is my thinking flexible, or am I only seeing shades of black and white?
• What is the opposite of my perception, and in what ways may it be true?