As we go through life we encounter different people and based on our initial impression, we form certain assumptions about them. They say “first impressions count,” right?
Based on how things went the first time we met, I may start to think of John as a “lazy person” or of Sarah as “unreliable.” And what happens is that once that first impression is formed, we automatically start to expect this person to “be true” to that label of being “lazy” or “unreliable” and we are likely to get that behavior.
But what if we, in spite of that negative first impression, choose to expect something different. Maybe “expect” doesn’t go deep enough, and is perhaps not the right word, because I expected people to behave differently from the first impression I had of them, but I kept on getting the same behavior.
What if we choose to “see” this person differently and treat him differently. Would they still have the same old negative behavior or attitude that struck us the first time about this person?
The answer is no!
You see… the thing is this. The way we are often, is the way our parents and other people treated us during our childhood. Unfortunately we internalized those experiences and started to believe certain things about ourselves. Once we believed that about ourselves we started to act that way. Perhaps somebody said “I was lazy” or “I was useless and that I wasn’t going to amount to anything.”
The reality is that we believe that.
Now, unless somebody else chooses to look beyond the act I may put up, and choose to love me anyway, I may never change.
We have the power to change our experiences in life, not just in terms of the situations we encounter but also in how people realte to us, purely by choosing to hold thoughts and images of love and appreciation for everyone we meet.
But I guess you already knew that. Maybe its not that you don’t know it, maybe its just that you think it is too much effort, which usually means you don’t think the person is worthy of that effort. After all, every person is responsible for his own life, right?
Everyone is indeed responsible for his own life and you would be absolutely right in thinking that way, except. What if you’re that other peron who needs to be loved, understood and appreciated.
I know that for many years I may not have acted worthy of love and appreciation. However someone somewhere chose to “see” me differently. Someone, somewhere decided that I was worth understanding, appreciating and investing in.
It would then be safe to say that I am the person I am, because someone loved me enough that they chose to not look at me the way I was, but the way I can be.
The German philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said:
“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that”
We all have people around us, including our partners, spouses and children who may act in ways that we don’t approve of. And perhaps we tried to change them physically and gave up because it wasn’t working? Perhaps what we should do, is to see and treat them differently.
Maybe we should start thinking good and loving thoughts about them and visualize them as happy people who have found their purpose in life and who are loving and are loved by everyone. And when we start showering others with our love, we can’t help but basking in that same love as others start showering us with love.