A Different Point Of View

"Another persons view or perception of 'reality' is just as valid as yours."

Psychologists and quantum physicists say that we have an incredible amount of information coming at us every second. One better known model by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that we have up to 2 million bits of information coming at us every second. This includes things we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

If we attempted to process this huge amount of information consciously we would go into overload, so we filter most of the information out and only pay conscious attention to around 134 bits per second. Some of us pay most attention to what we see, some to what we feel, some to what we hear and some to data, facts and figures.

This information gets run through our values, beliefs and subconscious programs and then it creates what is known as our ‘model of the world’. This forms our perception of ‘reality’ according to us.

None of us perceive reality as it really is, because we cannot process everything that is going on around us. This explains why we can have many people witness an event and have a different perception of what happens. It also explains why we can become ‘disturbed’ at times by someone else’s seemingly ‘offbeat’ or ‘inappropriate’ (to us anyway!) response to an event.

Remembering that we all have a different perception or view of the world around us is a vital skill in being an excellent communicator, negotiator, leader and manager.

In both personal and professional situations, remembering to respect that another persons ‘view’ or perception of reality is just as valid as ours, enables us to maintain rapport and improve the performance of all the people in our ‘team’.