Time for a Revolution in Perception

[thread_walker]

Habits... how much of our relationships are built on habits? Do we always pick on the same person? treat certain people with admiration? fear the same people? label the same people as cool? uncool? geek? clown? intellectual? How many of our interactions are based on a history that turns perception into assumption and then expectation

Comments

[answers_within]

From what I've seen, our discomfort with change - our own and others' - contributes as heavily as anything else to relationship issues. As you said, we absolutely get people fixed in our minds as a set of characteristics, and most of us are made very uncomfortable when someone grows and changes. We do this with ourselves too, and again as you observed, often enough that fixed image derives from others' fixed images of ourselves. It takes effort and attention to dissolve those assumptions and ask the open question of who this entity is right now, in this moment - and how do I feel about that

[thread_walker]

I have had a lot of these same thoughts.

[thelbk]

People change. People's perceptions of someone changes much slower.
I enjoy dropping into a totally unfamiliar group of people and seeing that their perception of me as completely different than, for instance, my family.
Sometimes it takes a stranger to see who you truly are now, post changes.