A Lesson in Perception, Judgement, and Choices

“We see what we want to see and these perceptions are shaped by every life experience that preceded it. From our perception, we judge what we see. At this point our emotions enter the picture. And from our judgement we make choices.”

I am a heavy user of social media, and one of the social media channels I use extensively is LinkedIn. One of the ways I use LinkedIn is to share my monthly newsletter with new connections. When I receive a new LinkedIn connection request, I send the person a thank you message to inform them that I gratefully accept their connection request as an interest on their part in staying connected and that one of the ways I will stay connected with them is through my monthly newsletter. I inform the new connection that I have added their name to my monthly email list and that they can unsubscribe to my monthly newsletter at any time (this practice is intended to respect anti-spamming legislation).

A few years ago I received a new connection request and, subsequently, sent my thank you message to this person with notification I would be adding the new connection to my email list. The response I received from this new connection informed me that my actions were unwelcomed. The new connection went on to criticize me for my practices and to share that my efforts with my monthly newsletter were a waste of time and that I was helping no one. This new connection informed me they had reached out because they wanted me to get involved with an initiative they were launching to save the lives of people but that they did not wish to associated with someone who sent out “meaningless messages” to people. Unbeknownst to the person who shared these thoughts with me…

A few months earlier I received an unexpected and unsolicited message from another LinkedIn connection to thank me for my monthly newsletter and to share with me that I had “saved their life.” They went on to explain that they reached out to me via LinkedIn at a very dark time in their life and, unexpectedly, found comfort and hope in my daily contemplative sharing on LinkedIn and my monthly newsletter. This was the third message of this type I had received in as many years.

The above two stories are interesting reactions to the very same practice and the very same newsletter. Both are extreme reactions, at the opposite end of the scales. One criticizes me for my practices, says I am wasting my time, and that they don’t wish to associated with someone who sends out “meaningless messages.” And the other reaction is from someone who feels my practices and newsletter saved their life. What gives? How is it possible to have such diametrically opposed views and reactions to the same thing?

The answer lies in our perception, judgements, and choices. We see what we want to see and these perceptions are shaped by every life experience that preceded it. From our perception, we judge what we see. At this point our emotions enter the picture. And from our judgement we make choices. And so it was for the two people mentioned above—they perceived something, made a judgement, and then acted (i.e., choice) based on their perception and judgement.

The lesson in all this is that we choose what we see. In the reenactment above, one person chose to see their experience one way, the other person chose to see their experience in another way. But the thing they were reacting to (i.e., the newsletter) was the same. The deeper lesson is that either person wasn’t reacting to the newsletter, but to their chosen perception and judgement of the newsletter.

The gift is this lesson is that we can choose however we wish to see any situation. Even if we choose, initially, to see it one way, we can change the way we see the situation. The choice truly is ours to make.