The world is our mirror so it’s not until we change how we view the world that the world changes.
In other words, it’s all in how we frame everything that happens to and around us.
Messages sent are always taken on the listeners terms. What you say to someone is filtered through their own frames of reference, biases, and already preconceived beliefs.
You can say a thing one way and one person might understand it as A and then another person may take the exact same sentence with the same pace and tone in a completely different way as B. This means no matter what you do, you may not be able to get your message across in exactly the way you intended.
Do you see a potential problem here?
You could call a store to ask if they have an item in stock. You could be direct and forgo the niceties and cut to the point asking if they have the item you’re looking for. The person on the other end of the line could be offended because they felt it was rude of you to skip the small talk instead of asking them how they were first.
In another scenario you could do everything to the letter. You could be polite and ask them how they are before getting to the point of the matter. But this too may leave the person on the other end annoyed. They could have been overwhelmed with customers – and here you are “wasting” their time with “filler” talk.
What a dilemma, because we can’t please everybody…
But instead what we can do is realize that we have more control over how we say things. And as the listener, we have more control over how we perceive things through our already positive preconceived beliefs.
I love words, they literally changed my life and showed me a different way to live than the one I was living. Words translated ideas to me that I applied which completely changed my life many years ago. But words and the english language can be tricky!
Words arranged one way can mean one thing – but then swap one word around and now you have a completely different meaning.
The same sentence can be taken two ways, either positive or negative.
Example: Someone tells you that “You think differently from everyone else.”
So now you can either take it with admiration as praise for your creativity and originality. Or critically as criticism for being strange and out of touch with the planet earth.
The good news is we have COMPLETE CONTROL over the meanings we give the information we hear.
Confirmation Bias
What is confirmation bias and how does it relate?
Confirmation Bias
Definition: The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms our existing beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing evidence that contradicts them.
Example: If you believe a certain diet is the best, you’ll click on articles and studies that support it and dismiss those that challenge it.
So in this example, a person might eat a meat or vegan only diet and convince themselves that they are eating healthy. All this despite the research that may say otherwise, instead supporting evidence that point towards a more balanced diet.
Another problem exists where even with research, we really have to do our own thinking and analysis because often times research too can be inflicted with the confirmation bias. Researchers might do an experiment with the intention to prove that X is good for you. For example, they might conduct research on how drinking wine daily is actually beneficial rather than how it’s harmful.
How does this connect to our behaviour and how we perceive things?
If you already believe that someone is insulting you or has negative intentions towards you, you might perceive their words or actions as a direct threat to you. But in reality that person may not have a real intention to act towards you in that manner. You might take whatever they say as a threat but actually they may not be aware at all of what they are saying.
However, if you’re already convinced that this person has good intentions, you might dismiss their actions as “They didn’t really mean to act that way, I know they are a good person.”
What does this mean?
It means that we have FULL CONTROL over how we choose to respond to every situation as well. We can go on about our day with good intentions about the world around us, and there’s a good chance that everything will work out in our favour – most of the time. Because life isn’t perfect and we co-exist with rude a**holes that sometimes take advantage of us.
You Can Have a Positive or Negative Reaction to the Same Stimuli
This next example happens in romantic relationships all the time.
The Belief That Your Partner Doesn’t Listen To You
A belief like this could be due to their previous behaviours of consistently interrupting you. And so you might be telling a story and they interrupt you – yet again. Now you are completely convinced they don’t listen because of the constant interrupting.
But then minutes later they surprise you with your favourite snack. This means they do listen to you, but because of your negative belief, you are already convinced they don’t and you completely forget the proof they listened to you when you told them about your favourite snack.
The Belief That Your Partner Does Listen To You
This time, you have the opposite beliefs about your partner. They interrupt you again and when they bring you your favourite snack you realize the only way they could have known about your new favourite snack is if they were listening. So you brush off their interruptions and smile the rest of the day knowing you have a partner that loves you.
With this new lens you may realize it’s not that they are purposely interrupting you because they don’t want to listen, it’s just part of their personality and they can’t help it.
The same idea here goes for success or failure in any calling.
We could approach everything we do with the belief that we already realized our goal, that we are destined to have it. This means that every time we run into challenges and failures, we easily disregard it thinking it’s a minor setback and keep pushing forwards despite all odds.
Whereas, if we have the initial belief that we are a failure, or that we aren’t good enough and can’t achieve, it’s very likely that when we encounter failure of any kind it will stop us dead in our tracks. Simply because the event has matched our belief.
But the truth is these obstacles and setbacks happen to everyone regardless. It doesn’t prove a person is not good enough! It’s the belief going into it that’s already determined the outcome.
A positive person has a much, much higher chance for success of any kind simply because of this belief compared to the person with a negative belief they can’t do something.
You can literally take it any way you want. But it’s fun when you can create positive stories about anything even if it’s not what was intended. This means we can take any negative statement or situation and put an optimistic twist on it!
We can choose to have what I like to call a Nothing Can Go Wrong Mindset. Where we choose from the start knowing and believing everything will only go right.
And then an interesting thing happens…
Confirmation bias kicks in and we start to look at everything positively, but not only that… We start to naturally think about how every moment can be turned into something beautiful. We think about how these moments can be turned into WINS!
So winning is all about how we choose to see everything that happens to us.
Your friend,
Jamie
