11:11 Waves Blog 19: Perception

Every Monday, I share 1 question for you to contemplate, 1 idea from me, 1 quote from others, and 1 inspiration for us.

This week’s topic is: Perception

Growing up I attended the “Liceo Classico” - a humanistic high school where pupils study philosophy, history, literature and ancient languages such as Latin and Greek. As a teenager, I remember spending hours and hours translating texts and exploring the work of many authors, poets and philosophers, thinking that most of the lessons and ways of thinking are just as relevant today as they were centuries ago. One philosophy that has always resonated with me (in principle) is Stoicism and the Stoic Mindset which is all about developing perception and remembering that everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact and that everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

One Question for you

Both happiness and unhappiness depend on perception.

Discuss the question here.

One Idea from me

Perception is the way how we recognize and interpret the environment around us. As very complex beings, we don’t all see the same things in the same way and what we see isn’t necessarily a true reflection of reality. Because of this, our responses to the same event can look very different. Viktor Frankl explains that between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. Below I share two suggestions on how you can practice changing and choosing your perspective:

Zoom in: Zooming in brings the details of a situation into sharp focus. This week I invite you to select a situation and analyze it in all details. Analyze your starting point: How are you interpreting what a situation means? How are you making and testing assumptions? How are you forming conclusions? Then, analyze your reasoning: Why have you selected this response? What beliefs led to that action? What data have you chosen to use and what data have you disregarded and why? What could be different if you chose to be more generous in your interpretation of perspectives?

Zoom out: Changing your perspective to focus on the big picture can be a useful tool too. A suggestion is to look for patterns of the way you perceive things. You can do this by taking some time to reflect on specific situations or by seeing if independent and objective people would look at the same situation and come to the same decision or conclusion. This practice will enable you to think more critically and less emotionally and empower you to see things that you may have originally missed because you were caught up in your pattern.

One Quote from others

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” Wayne W. Dyer

One Inspiration for us

There are different types of perceptions and one of these is visual perception. Visual perception is a dynamic process that goes beyond replicating the visual information provided by retina. By studying the way the brain fills in missing and ambiguous images, shapes or visual information, we can learn a lot about the way we perceive the world around us. Optical illusions offer a rich ground for this as they include images that push the brain to make determinations and decisions that tell us about how we perceive things. Below you can find some fascinating optical illusions.

A young lady or an older woman?

A duck or a rabbit?

Two profiles or a chalice?

A woman’s face or a saxophone player?