It's never easy to see a situation through the eyes of another person.
We tend to assume that everyone has the same view of the world as we, ourselves do.
We think everyone has the same perception of events, too.
Of course, we all know this isn't true.
It can't be.
As unique individuals with distinctive personality traits, emotional wiring, thought processes and 'come from', everybody has a different perception.
That's why it's so important to try to see a given situation through the eyes of someone else.
Maybe it's during an argument with your partner or kids, your co-worker during work on a project or your boss during a salary negotiation.
Whatever the circumstance, you're always closer to a 'win-win' if both parties make an attempt to understand the reason behind the others behavior, and work toward finding a common understanding.
The emotions we feel in the moment directly affect our perception of any situation.
It's the human condition to have emotion attached to their perspective - whether we're one of the "emotional" types or one of the "logical" types, what we perceive is restricted and disoriented by how we feel about it.
I know some very objective, logical and systematic people...
and I've never met a person who could completely divorce themselves from their feelings.
So even when we know the exact specifics (or so we think) of whatever we are considering, we can miss a lot of the possible meaning because we are looking at it through the perspective of our own personal feelings lens.
It's instinctive, and pretty much inescapable, that we each see everything from our own intellectual position.
Clearly, our state of awareness is an ever-changing point of contact between an inside and an outside world.
And yet it's imperative that we understand that our perception is only one of the infinite possible viewpoints out there, and that we aren't learning much if we don't know how to look at situations from different perspectives.
So when we think about different situations in our lives from another angle, it allows us a much deeper understanding.
Is your 17-year-old son really lazy because he isn't getting up on time in the morning? Or is there truth to the theory that hormones produce melatonin on a skewed schedule as teenagers grow - making him stay up until 4am and leaving him tired in the morning? Why is your boss acting as if your position isn't really important to the company anymore? Has he changed his mind about you or is the business landscape shifting and he's attempting to find balance by encouraging you to grow in a new direction that will fit better? Does your close friend really not want to spend time with you? Or does she simply need time and space for discernment in her life right now? There's another perspective for everything - as many as there are people.
If you're finding that your perception is getting a bit hazy around the edges, perhaps it's time to trade in an egocentric world view for a more open and understanding perspective.
If we all take a step towards looking at situations from different angles, with different eyes, our world will change.
Certainly, our own perception will.