Perception creates images

So, we are communicating every moment. And like someone said (don’t remember who right now):” You cannot not communicate”.

Let’s analyze a little how our minds work when we are communicating.

There is a real version of myself that is determined by all decisions I’ve made in the past, all the hopes I have for the future and all the moments I live in the now. And in all this mix, here comes the perception. The perception is the capacity of our mind to transform the reality based on our own world map.

So, how perception works in a communication?

It works well cause along with assumptions and expectations it creates two new versions of myself when I’m participating in a communication:

1. The “I” as I want to see myself

2. The “I” as others are seeing me

Communication between me and the world

What happens is that I send messages to the world using the image of me that I want to share to the world.

And the other people are replying to my communication to the image of me that they are seeing.

This means that there is a communication wall composed by those 2 projected images. And this wall is filtering the messages I sent and the messages I receive.

Communication between two people

Now, now let’s look more close how it works between two people:

We can observe in this:

The image of what I want to be communicates with the image I have about the other

And there is no communication between the real me and the other real person.

Actually the message arrives to the real persons, but with very much noise created by these images.

Why? Because not only that I’m communicated from another perspective, but also I’m addressing to an image of the person and not to the person itself.

It is no wonder that because this way of communication, it is very hard to create authentic relations based on the 4 relationship rules.

Now just by being aware of this model, we can try to communicate beyond it.

And our body language is doing it already, but the signs are not coming so quick to the conscious mind.

How the communication should happen

So being aware of these images we can let them behind and communicate from one real person to the other.

That means:

- no assumptions

- express true feelings

- dare to ask, give, receive, refuse

As Zig Ziglar summarized:

“When 2 people meet, there’s really 6 people present. Each man as he sees himself, each man as he wants to be seen, and each man as he is.”

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