Have you ever been in the situation where you’re having a conversation with a group of people...
you’re talking and telling your story and the moment there is a pause in the conversation..someone changes the subject?...
This is one of my number one pet peeves for many reasons.. 1. It’s just rude...like who raised you? 2. Because it leaves room for misinterpretation on both sides. On one side you’re 1000% sure this person was disinterested in your words or your words were just not that important. On the other end, the person’s intentions could be completely different. Maybe they thought their topic related. Maybe they read a part of the room you couldn’t see (you’re actually boring the hell out of everyone, no one is listening to this endless story) and was trying to prevent your future embarassment... the intentions were decent but at the end of it all the only piece that matters here is the perception of the interaction.
Intention: what one intends to do or be about; a determination to act in a certain way. Generally, every day average people that aren’t sociopaths, tend to have the best of intentions. We want the best for ourselves and for others and we want to be seen as decent human beings. We never want to hurt people outright and believe that our intentions are easily comprehensive.
The trying piece to all of this is that perception is a bigger beast to tackle...
Perception is defined as a mental image or a capacity for comprehension. Your words or actions through the eyes of someone else are no longer yours. Everyone’s eyes process light in different ways. Some are light sensitive, others can stare directly into the sun and see the harm in that later, some can see well into the back of the room and some can’t see what they’re looking at until its directly in front of them.
The light of intent through the eyes of perception...We’re constantly learning here. Most of us are doing our best to ensure that someone’s mental image of our intent is identical to our own and this is indeed a task. This means being specific with our words; saying exactly what we want, what we need and exactly what we mean. Expressing ourselves in a way that shows our true intent through our tone and diction...basically say what you mean without sounding asshole-ly, you guys know what I’m talking about.
We’re also learning that it doesn’t matter what we say or how we say it... people’s perception of us, our words and our actions are beyond our control once our work is done. We can be as intentional as possible and still be misunderstood. One may ask where we’d find satisfaction in this situation and that lies in the fact that your were authenic. You were true to your feelings and expressed yourself in a way that was necessary to you while still being a considerate being and THAT is all you can ask of yourself. There’s always 3 sides to every scenario: intention, perception and reality.
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