I have been speaking about the importance of perceptions for some time now & but mostly from the perspective of how we make others feel. As I have been writing my book on joy (which is almost ready, at last!) I have explored many different aspects of life that are components of joy.
Mary, who has helped me a great deal with the content, and I had a discussion one day about a section in which I had written 'only we are responsible for our feelings' and that we could not blame others for making us feel in any particular way. She pointed out to me that just as people are physically damaged by physical abuse, our emotional bodies are damaged by emotional or verbal abuse.
I know psychologists generally teach that only we are in control of how we feel and that is true in part. We always have choices & we can step back and choose to change how we feel. But It is also true that other people can hurt our feelings! We can say 'you hurt my feelings' & if it's true of course! We can't say it just to manipulate!
The more I thought about it, the more I realized the truth of what Mary taught me. Do you remember hearing or singing 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me' when you were a child? I don't believe that anymore!
And I bet you don't either although we try to make children feel better by saying it to them. I bet most of us have been deeply wounded by other people's spoken or written words. But if we just shove down what has really happened, those deep feelings persist and fester and cause us to lash out and hurt others. As my friend Kathy says brilliantly & 'its like putting a layer of cheesecloth over the grand canyon and saying it doesn't exist!'
I have been hurt many times with peoples words and, sadly, I know I have hurt other people with my words & mostly unknowingly, but sometimes because I gossiped or talked about someone behind their back and it came back to them. I deeply regret those times and feel shame about them.
I can honestly say though I have never done it intentionally & gone out to hurt someone with my words, voice tones or in other non verbal ways.
As I delved into why these things happen, it reinforced my thinking that pretty much everything is about feelings, which arise from our perceptions of situations. How we perceive and feel about ourselves in particular.
In the corporate world, we focus on leadership, success, profits and customer service. It's a no brainer that customer service is about feelings, but to improve customer service, we have to have employees who perceive themselves as valuable and FEEL good about themselves, the company and what they do, so they can perceive the customer as important and genuinely care about and help them.
Leadership is also about feelings & most successful leaders will say their gut feelings are critical in their decision making. Their job is to inspire, motivate and enthuse (all feelings!); they take their passion (a feeling) and infuse it to the rest; they appear (are perceived as) confident, clear and inspire feelings of confidence.
Emotional intelligence suggests that a leaders MOOD is one of the most critical elements in leadership. The leader's mood determines the mood and therefore feelings of the rest of the organization. So an optimistic leader will create an optimistic (feelings again) organization. Hint & if you are in a leadership role and that means all of us & how people perceive your moods is REALLY important! It determines how they feel!
A leader can do those things more easily when they feel optimistic, secure and clear about who they are and where they and the company needs to go.
All business is built on relationships. What are relationships about? PERCEPTIONS AND FEELINGS! Do you feel trust, trustworthy, honor, respect, admiration, courage to confront difficult situations; hope that things will work out; confidence in what the other person will do or that the work will be handled responsibly; committed to stick with it and make things better & I could go on and on & but they are all basically feelings! Do you perceive the other person as caring, loving and kind, or dishonest, nasty and greedy? Your perception will affect how you feel about them and around them.
We are more comfortable talking about the impact of feelings in personal relationships & because it seems more obvious! Which brings me back to my original point! We can and DO hurt others with the way we treat them. What we say, write, imply or do can deeply wound another person or make them angry, frustrated & or feel great joy and peace.
Being aware of that may help us think before we react & so we can hopefully respond and be gentle with others. If you ever have the intention to hurt others and then devise a way to do it & STOP IT NOW! Do you really want to operate in the world that way? It's not rewarding for anyone …and says more about YOUR feelings about yourself than anything else!
When we feel insecure, angry, hurt, unsafe, disrespected, abused, used, taken advantage of, frightened and any one of the many negative emotions that run away with us, we tend to project it onto others. We try to blame them and make them feel bad, guilty, confused or anything to avoid having to look at our own feelings driving these reactions inside us.
Acknowledging our own feelings and the truth of what we are really dealing with, is a critical step to joyful relationships.
Also being discriminating about how much of what is going on is your own feelings, and how much is the other person's feelings making them attack you. It's most likely a projection of their feelings & does it stir up your defensiveness which is behavior that follows feelings of fear in the form of insecurity, inadequacy, anger, frustration, injustice or other perceptions we have.
Of course, just to finish on a joyful note, if we can make others feel horrible, then we can also make people feel wonderful if we choose to! How do people feel around you? Do they want to hang around you & do they seek your company? Do they laugh and sound more secure and safer when you interact with them.
Make sure that everything you do today lifts other people and situations up. Look in a mirror and truly see & don't just perceive and judge & yourself and the feelings YOU have that are driving your behavior. Lift yourself up as well as everyone else you meet & in person, on the phone, on email or in any other form of communication!
Find your light and shine it on others!
