Perception, Reality and the Chasm In Between

The old adage is that perception equals reality. According to Wikipedia,

"Many philosophers contend that perception consists of one's interpretation of the world, but as commonality of perception trends toward 100% perception transmorgrifies into reality. Case in point: the sky is blue - reality, now imagine everyone but you perceived the sky to be red. The reality would then become "the sky is red". Thus reality is merely a popular consensus of perception. All things in the universe are understood as received through the various filters of human understanding and thus are perceptions of reality. What we commonly refer to as reality is, in fact, merely an agreed upon perception.

Many cognitive psychologists hold that, as we move about in the world, we create a model of how the world works. That is, we sense the objective world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional, in the same sense that scientific hypotheses are provisional (cf. in the scientific method). As we acquire new information, our percepts shift."

I was having a conversation with someone at work the other day. It became abundantly clear how different our perceptions were. He thought I would've been popular in high school and had trouble picturing me as a ghost. Now times have changed and that was 10 years ago. So, in and of itself, that would've been meaningless. But they went on to say how popular I was now... how confident I appeared. Basically this person saw me as self-confident, outgoing, extraverted, popular... all the things I don't see in myself.

How do I see myself? I see myself as introverted. I definitely don't see myself as all that confident. Maybe I just fake it really well. *lol* I see myself as more of a recluse and pretty guarded. Basically I see myself as the complete opposite as how Stephan sees me.

Made me realize a couple of key points. For one... people are paying attention to everything you do, especially once you start moving up in the company. What kind of example are you setting?

Secondly, how you see yourself may not be the same as how other people see you. In fact they might be complete opposites. It's all about perception. How we have constructed our world view will shape how we see other people and their actions.