The deeper I go into my own personal development journey the more I realise that we're all viewing the world and experiencing life differently.
Doing a deep excavation of my own childhood patterns of behaviour over the last decade or so has allowed me to see that my own perception changes as I heal old past traumas. This has taught me that if my own perception change that readily clearly other people's perceptions can and do change as well.
Learning about the personality profiling system, Human Design, has helped me see, without a shadow of a doubt, that we are all born to see (and hear and sense) the world differently. I've stopped automatically assuming that people see what I see, hear what I hear, or get what I get. I now know that they don't, they can and do perceive things, sometimes, entirely differently to the way I do. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Journey through the childhood stuff and the personality profiling stuff has made me intensely curious about other people's perspectives and how they are perceiving the same reality they seem to be sharing with me. What are they seeing? What are they feeling? What are they hearing?
What are they picking up that I'm missing entirely? And, especially when I'm teaching, what am I sharing that they're completely struggling to perceive at all?
I often think it would be fun/incredible/hugely enlightening to step into someone else's body and experience life for even a short while the way they perceive it. I think if there was a way to do this we would be much, much kinder, compassionate and understanding with one another.
But I don't just imagine doing this with other people; I imagine doing it with my 5-year-old self and my 100-year-old self, because they're going to be able to see/hear/feel things that my "worrying about stupid shit" 40-something-year-old would really benefit from.
Let's look at what I imagine my 100-year-old self would say to the current me if we could dialogue based on what she's perceiving in her own time-space reality:
Caroline, sweetheart, life is long. Dad was right when he asked the question, "Is this going to matter in 5 years?". It's a useful way to gain a bigger perspective on all the little things you often worry about.
You do worry a lot, darling. And I promise, it's not necessary. Yes, bad, scary and sometimes awful things are going to happen in your lifetime. But worrying about them, in advance and then after the fact, isn't going to change anything.
I want to suggest something now that's going to seem counter to the idea of letting go of worry and that is, play. The more you deliberately play--and by play I mean create and make love and do things that make you laugh and... anything you could do with a small child that they would find delightful, like dance, sing, climb on and up and over things--the more energy you'll have to deal with awful stuff when it happens.
Of course, you'll need to do the responsible adult-type things as well. You already know that. But it's easy to get caught up in those things thinking that they are life. They're not life, they're necessary in life, but they themselves are not life. Life is creating, contributing, doing things that make you a light in the world for yourself and others. Life is expressing yourself and creating things that are beautiful for the sake of beauty rather than productivity.
Be productive, sure. Yes, do that. It's great. But in and of itself, it's not the point.
Being productive without creating beauty, without contributing, without experiencing joy or expressing yourself? That's not the point. When you do that you have missed the point entirely.
Surround yourself with people who are creating joyful, expressive, beautiful things that help others. They're being productive but the productivity is a by-product of all the other stuff. Focus on doing the other stuff and the all that energy you've been wasting on all these years on thinking you need to be more productive with suddenly be (gloriously!) available for other, way more fun, things. I promise.
This post was prompted by this guy in this post in this community. I opted to answer the question regarding perception change. Of course, I gave an unconventional answer because, as it turns out, this is what organically wanted to come out of me today.
Today's post was written in Auckland, NZ where I'm currently on holidays with my love. This is the coffee I drank (a Soy Dirty Chai) while he did a few extra kilometres of running than my legs were up for. All photos in this (Hive Blog Posting Month) post were taken by me, on my Google Pixel 2XL inside Pukekawa (the Auckland Domain).