I just realized that title might make you think I am going to share some kind of secret about toilet paper. Like, how to get it for cheap. Not to disappoint you but my posts are never that useful. I mean, if I knew how to live a thrifty life I would be sharing my know-how. Trust me. No, my posts are never that real world helpful. Instead, I am going to share about how two things govern our behavior and interaction with other people. I’m talking about perception and projection.

Perception

This really isn’t a secret though, right? How we see the world and how we interpret what we see is filtered by our brains. We could revisit the 2015 gold/blue dress that went viral (which was obviously gold and white) as an example. It’s not just our vision our brains are coloring but every sensation we experience. Our brains govern how we perceive the world.

This is why two people who experience the same moment do not actually experience the same moment. Let’s just say, there are a lot of filters in our brain and nobody has the same filters. Any sense we feel is sent to our brain which in turn accesses a rather complex database before it returns a response.

Have you ever heard someone tell you a story of an interaction they had with someone else? Or, I should put it this way, an interaction they thought they had with someone else? The retelling gets filtered by their perception of themselves.

• A quiet, mild-mannered coworker who never raises a voice to the boss will have you believe that they caused a scene at a fast food establishment when an order was messed up. But did you though? Or did you just think you did because you had to use a few more words than you normally would have? It’s just in all the time I’ve known you, you have never made a scene so maybe or maybe not.
• A friend tells you she unleashed on her meddling mother in law after 15 years. The account is replete with dialogue and the reactions of everyone who witnessed it. Possibly. But I wonder what version the mother in law would tell if I listened to her side of the story?
• Your neighbor excitedly shares how she stood up to a bully that tried to cut in front of her at the store. Somehow her 95 pound 5’2” frame suddenly made a 300 pound 6’3” quake in his boots. Oh, really? I’d like to see the video footage of that encounter, please.

The point is, how we experience events may not be the same way others around us experience them. And then there is the way we share what we went through. Every one is a story teller to some extent.

Projection

Which leads us to projection. We figure that because we were all in the same moment we all have the same take away. So, we assign our feelings to others.

“I finally yelled at her and said, “NO! You can’t have my Skittles. And she was all like, okay, and she looked like she was about to cry.” Maybe she was about to cry but it had nothing to do with the non-offered treats but more because this person just had the worst day possible and hearing one more rejection just reminded her of all the things she did wrong.

• “All the fast food employees started hurrying to get me out of there. They were afraid of this crazy lady and what I would say next. The guy that took my order was looking at me like ‘just be quiet before my manager comes over’ and I was like, good, get your manager over here!” Or was he just trying to figure out how many days until he graduated from high school and was off to college?
• “My mother in law just sat there and scowled at me. She has never liked me and now she hates me.” Or since this is the first time you have ever expressed your own ideas was she just taking a moment to process what you said? All this time, she thought the two of you were on the same page. Now, you have given her a different perspective and she may need a moment to readjust.
• “I told him that we all have places to be and he needed to back off and get to the end of the line. There was no way I was going to allow someone to cut in front of me. He put his head down and sulked to the back of the line.” Or did he not realize there was a line and was embarrassed when he discovered there was one.

While non-verbal communication is a an important cue we can’t assume the meaning behind such expressions. That is slapping another’s nonverbal with our personal filter. I’m not a statistician or even great at math but I can tell you the odds are not great that you are going to get it right every time. Follow up and ask some questions.

We have a tendency to not only color our experiences with our own filters but we assign our personal filters to other people and things as well. SPOILER ALERT: it doesn’t work that way. It never has.

Once we learn that we are all governed by 2P we can see the need for good communication skills. Get crackin’ on that, will you?