The World Is How You Choose To See It

In a recent post I explained how other people’s opinion of you has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them and how they are feeling, what they believe, their values and so on. In this post I want to turn that around and look at how your opinions affect your world.

Opions Are Formed on Everything

Opinions about people are just one way in which we view the world. We also hold opions about everything in life - our jobs, events in our lives, our neighbour’s cat, worldwide events and absolutely everything else. The point I was trying to get across in my previous post about opinions is that those opinions or viewpoints are formed internally and this applies to everything else in life too. As a result, how you see the world - your world, the world of your friends and family and the world at large, has very little to do with the actual physical circumstances of the world and everything to do with YOU and how you feel, what you believe, what you choose to think and so on.

Let me give you a practical example… Last month I had the great pleasure of seeing Madonna in concert at Wembley Arena in the UK. I have wanted to see her live since the early nineties when I saw a video of her latest tour. For me the concert was an absolute blast - it was everything I expected it to be and more. I had goosebumps all night long, I loved it and it was absolutely the highlight of my month.

However, not everybody felt the same way. There were sound problems and some people were so disgusted by it that they got up and left half way through. Apparently the next day there were complaints all over the Internet. While I was queuing up for the toilets after the concert there was a woman behind me on the phone to a friend about the experience. She complained about some of the songs and the way the set was arranged, the accompanying videos and so on. The very things that I thought were great were a turn off to this woman.

Did Madonna put on a brilliant show or did she let down her fans? Neither. The fact is that Madonna performed a concert and yet it is not logical or even possible to attach any labels to it such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because that is something that can only be placed by the individual and that label will be different for everybody even though the physical experience was the same. To me, she put on a brilliant show and to other people, it sucked. All of those viewpoints are accurate to those individual people and has very little to do with Madonna!

The Story of Two Villages

I don’t remember where I read about this story but I’ll paraphrase it here. There are two villages separated by a river and there is a man who conducts crossings from one village to the next. Very often when he takes somebody across the river they will ask him, “what are the people like in the other village?” and he responds by asking them, “well, what are the people like in your village?”. If they respond that in their village people are generally friendly and helpful he will tell them that in the other village they are much the same. If they tell him that the people in his village are unfriendly and just out for themselves the river man will tell his passenger that the people in the other village are much the same.

You see the river man understands the way the world works - he knows that his passenger is going to see in the other village pretty much the same thing he saw in his current village because what he sees and his opinion of the people in the other village come from within himself, and have nothing to do with the village or the people in it.

You Can’t Make Somebody Else See What You See

I have a friend who is a police officer working in London and she has seen a lot of bad stuff in her time and has also suffered several personal injuries through her work. I remember a couple of years ago having a long debate with her about people and the world in general. She believes that people are inherenly bad, and that the world is a bad place. I believe that people are inherently good and that the world is a good place.

Back then, I didn’t know the things that I am talking about today and I remember fiercely defending my viewpoint and our debate became quite heated! She still holds the same opinion now, and so do I but what has now changed is that I understand that the world is simply what it is, and that it is not good or bad as those labels exist only in our own judgements. I see the world as a good place because that is how I choose to see it but I understand why other people would see it as a bad place and now I can simply accept that we each see it differently, and that those experiences are different for everybody and there is no need to try and make another person see the world (or anything) as you do. You wouldn’t be able to - it’s impossible because you are not them.

The World is How You Choose it to be

You will experience the world - people, jobs, events, experiences however you choose to. Of course, when you have lived your entire life a certain way and hold certain beliefs that have been a lifetime in the making then it is unlikely that you will have any radical shift overnight. What I am hoping to do in this post is open your eyes to the possibility that something you are perceiving in a negative way might not necessarily have to be as bad as you think it is. Does everybody else feel the same way or do others see things differently? Are other people enjoying something you loathe? Is it possible for you to feel better about something by changing the way you think about it?

How do you see the world?

Stumble it!