Been pondering the role perception plays on my life. Problems rarely turn out to be as big as I think they are. Or said differently, problems turn out to be exactly as big as I think they are.
So often my brain takes a circumstance – like a problem at work – and starts to turn it over and over, looking at it every different way, drawing from past experience and trying to draw conclusions. Attempting to anticipate how every other person will react if I choose to take one action or another.
Overthinking.
Perceptions are the problem. Perceptions are this layer of interpretation, created by my brain, based on the collective experiences of my life, and put forth as “information”. They may be helpful or they may not, but the insight here is they are not real. Perceptions are not part of the current problem or situation. So they must be taken with a grain of salt. Depending on the situation and my personal experiences, maybe a VERY BIG grain of salt — to the point that maybe those perceptions/thoughts are not really helpful at all. Realize these thoughts created by my conditioned mind could actually be getting in the way; they could be making the situation seem bigger or worse than it actually is. And this is happening exactly at the moment when it would be far better to focus on what is immediately in front of me.
Much better to:
1) Recognize those thoughts for what they are – just a product of my mind which has been conditioned by the particular experiences of my life.
2) Realize my thoughts might be wreaking havoc making this problem seem bigger than it is.
3) Understand that I have the power to choose to let those thoughts go.
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