Mission 3: Understanding Perspective

Topic of post:

1. Learning how perspective's filter can skew reality

2. How to change to a scientific perspective rooted in reality

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It's extremely common knowledge that people's perspective can skew facts and reality. The term "seeing things through rose colored glasses" is an easy example. My favorite extension of that is "red flags look normal when you're wearing rose colored glasses". If that doesn't define my young adult life...

Perspective is how your ego rationalizes everything. It can drive your decisions and shapes a lot of who you are. Who you are choosing to be. There is a problem with perspective, however. Perspective is built over a lifetime of experiences. It is a view of the world that while technically true, only paints part of the picture. An easy thought experiment I created years ago shows it best. It is something anyone can do and gives instant results:

Get 2 people to volunteer for this experiment. Find 3 tall cups or containers. You will fill these with water of different temperatures. Without showing your test subjects what you're doing fill the left cup with cold water. As cold as you can get it without ice forming- like water from a fridge. In the middle put room temperature water in. For the right cup put hot water in from a sink tap. Not hot enough to boil, show steam, or most importantly burn anyone. Just hot enough where you can safely feel it is hot. Next put your volunteers in front of the cups. Have one person put their hand in the cold water and the other in the hot. Let them leave their hands in the water for 10-20 seconds. Then have them take those same hands and immediately dunk them in the room temperature water in the middle. After, ask them about their experience. The person who dunked their hand in the cold water first will tell you that the water in the middle felt warm. The person who dunked their hand in the hot water first will tell you that the water in the middle felt cool.

How can this be!? The cup in the middle is both warm & cool at the same time!? Perspective is a fickle bitch. Both observations are technically true but when they meet in reality they are opposing forces. When people use perspective to form facts instead of opinion wars are started.

Perspective is great in a certain light. It forms the most unique parts of your identity. When you try to use perspective outside of opinion however things quickly break down. Cults are formed. Groups of people emerge (flat earthers & Nazis both built their ideologies based on perspective instead of measurable facts) and real harm can be done.

So what is the alternative? In essence, it's the scientific method! Question, Research, Hypothesize, Experiment, Test Hypothesis, Draw Conclusions. Using science you can create a bridge for perspectives to meet in the middle. By simply measuring the temperature of each cup and attaching your reality to that you will find you can replace a skewed perspective with one that's grounded in reality. You will say "Ah, this cup seems to be 35F degrees, this one 70, and that other 110. I can see how the sequence of events would lead both perspectives to alternate outcomes". In other words - The water in the middle cup isn't cold or hot. It's 70 degrees.

Side note: Did anyone just catch a reference to Mission 1!? I did. I did....

By grounding yourself in reality and not your personal perspective you gain the ability to see all sides of everything. Is the rock hard? Maybe my hand is just soft. Lets test the rock for it's relative hardness compared to other rocks. That's a silly example but it nails down the point clearly. You don't actually know if the rock is hard until you compare it objectively to other rocks. All you know is that, to you, the rock is hard. That's a great opinion, but too often we classify it as fact. If someone needs the hardest rock to save the world and you throw them one that crumbles easily because it was hard to you... While you're not technically wrong within your perspective you still just killed us all.

Another way of reaching the same end point:

When it comes to situations and life events another technique I use often is to try to remove myself entirely from the equation. When people come to me with problems, either about another person/event or issues they have with me or something I've done, I use a brain hack explained in Mission 1 to not react. To stop myself so that I can take control. Instead of thinking of my future self and working backwards I try to remove myself entirely from the issue. Look at all the parts and opinions and try to see where they are rooted. Then when I plug myself back in I am able to try to be the solution instead of another side to the problem.

This also works with your internal dialogue! I've gone into business meetings recently with a goal to maximize profit. It is a decision made every day in nearly every company in the world. Just before the meeting started I turned to my partner and said "We've got to change everything. I want to give them everything they are asking for and make it work on our end." It's good that I've surrounded myself with good people because my partner said he felt the same but didn't want to speak up.

What I did, on the surface, was a bad business decision. I lost profit margins and made my company all the more lean as a result. That's just it though. I just told you everything about me, me, me. Opinions based on my limited perspective. I wasn't considering the world around me. When I stopped myself I looked at all the moving parts without me in them. I saw a community of people that work hard to support their families. I saw that I was going into a meeting ready to take a commission off of their hard labor. That I was milking the community instead of building it. I realized that's not the business I want to be in. That my core business philosophy is better rooted as a value added service, offering things on top of what already exists and making money off of my labor instead of taking a cut from theirs. The change I saw was instant. Now people are lining up to work with me. They feel seen and supported. I am their breath of fresh air instead of another weight on their chest.

Honestly... I love being me.

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How this helps:

Do you know how older people can be locked into their views and become vile & miserable as they age? How they can say the most inappropriate things and not understand that it's wrong in any way? Well...

If you ground your perspective in reality you will see the whole truth, not just one side of it. You see what is instead of only what it means to you. This gives you the ability to see things and make decisions that can have an amazing impact on yourself & everyone around you. To stop being at war with your environment.

Maybe this will help you see a friend's perspective in a problem between you two. Maybe this will help you be the bridge between 2 fighting friends. Beyond interactions with other humans - You can now see the temperature of the water and know just how hard that rock is. In short, this will help you pull your head out of your ass.

This gives you control to make good changes in your life that can benefit everyone. After all, put good in... Get good out.

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