Perception

per·cep·tion

noun

1.

the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the sensesor of the mind; cognition; understanding.

2.

immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as ofmoral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition;discernment: an artist of rare perception.

3.

the result or product of perceiving,  as distinguished from the act of perceiving; percept.

4.

Psychology. a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present.

Have you ever wondered about how true your perception of yourself is?  How about your perception of others?  How close is it to being correct?  The other day I was watching a video on meditation and the instructor/lecturer said "you can never truly know another person, including a spouse, because your perception of them is colored with your own projections"

**rug pulled out from under feet, bruise butt, bang head, see stars...**

Holy shit!  Well, if that's true then what does that mean about my perception of myself???  Is it colored by a projection of what I think I'm like?  How about what other people see when they look at me?

Of course this sent me into a spiral of serious self evaluation and due to this and some other things I realized two things about myself that seriously need some work.

a) contrary to my own belief - I can be a passive aggressive person.  When I realized this and started looking for I realized that there are times that I intentionally word things a certain way or say certain things aloud to try and get a certain result.  The worst part was that it happened completely unintentionally - so if it happens without thought then the habit had to have been formed at some point...

b) I stay in my head way too much.  Meaning I "stew" or "dwell" over things and justify it by telling myself I'm just thinking it over to decide whether it's worth talking about or not.  The problem (or so it seems the more I think about it) is that I don't just think about it - if it involves another person I'll have a whole conversation with that person and insert how I think they will respond... Obvious problem being that in turn (at times) this makes it seem like I already had the conversation when in fact I never gave the other person a chance to speak for themselves... or in the worse case scenario the conversation happens and doesn't go the way I thought it would and unnecessary emotions come up...

At this point you are probably thinking - Geez Louise - This chick is CRAZY!  LOL (can't say I blame you)

So my new goals are a) to be especially aware of the possibility of passive agressive behavior and b) to stay out of my head.

I'm thinking that if I can work on these two things that my perception of events and people may very well change.  Or there is, of course, the chance that I'm just completely off my rocker.  LOL  Mostly - I just want to be a better person - I want my friends to be able to count on me and to be trustworthy.  I don't want to be that girl - full of drama.  I want to be the best that I can be...

So yeah - I may be crazy, but hey - at least I'm willing to admit it and keep searching and working at what I find.  :)