Mad As Hell? Personal Perception Changer

Have you recently had an unpleasant confrontation with someone? How would you like to get a different perspective so that you have more resources and options to deal with the situation? The way we see things (perceive) determines how we feel and react.

As I was contemplating what topic you might find valuable for this post, I recalled a client this past week that just experienced a most uncomfortable business situation. He was wrongly and needlessly embarrassed and humiliated in front of some of his peers, and consequently was very angry. He wasn’t thinking with his best logical brain on how to proceed in rectifying the situation. I walked him through this exercise and he gained useful information that helped him proceed and understand the situation.

This exercise is very powerful. In its original form it’s known in NLP as the Perceptual Positions. Since I’m all about speaking in very simple words, I’m calling it the “Personal Perception Changer”.

This simple exercise enables you to step out of what you are currently experiencing and garner new information by seeing things from a different perspective. The knowledge you gain from doing it will help you change the way you see it, and therefore how you are reacting. You will also be calmed down enough to make any necessary changes in your own behavior and thus get a much better outcome than just being angry or hurt.

First, I want to share the definitions for this exercise so you can just follow along with me as I walk you through the exercise.

1st Position (Self) The position of seeing, hearing, and feeling from out of you, through your eyes, walking in your shoes. This is a healthy position to operate from. You need to be here to speak from your heart, with authenticity, to present yourself, your thoughts, feelings, and responses, and to be present with someone else. When you operate only from this position, however, you will be viewed as very selfish and perhaps may even be dealing with mental illness.

2nd Position (Other) This is the position to understand, feel with, experience empathy for and see things from another’s point of view. From this perspective you can balance your needs and wants with another’s needs and wants. When you operate only from this perspective you may be dealing with codependency issues.

3rd Position (Fly on the Wall) This is the position of stepping back to observe from a dispassionate perspective. You are neither pro or con, just appreciate both positions fully. People that stay in 3rd person are seen as cold, or mechanical. They tend to be very highly educated, operating from their thinking, or perhaps greatly emotionally injured and put their thinking as a buffer between themselves and their environment.

4th Position (System) This is the position for understanding the entire system as a whole, the company, extended family, community in which you live or how this interaction from this perspective affects the larger system.

5th Position (God or Universe) This is the position of all knowing, everywhere present and eternal. What will you learn from seeing the interaction from the highest all knowing level?

Now, we are ready to do the exercise of “Personal Perception Changer”.

Think of a time recently when you had an experience of confrontation or argument where things didn’t come out with you being at your best. It might have been in responding to criticism or unwanted news, or a fight with a loved one.

1. Go back to that time now when you had the disagreeable experience and recall what you were seeing, hearing and feeling from being in your shoes.

Now,

2. Imagine what it would be like to step out of your shoes, and float over to the other person and drop down and be looking at you through their eyes and sensing through their sensory system. From that person’s perspective, look at you. From this perspective, what do you see, hear and feel. Use their language to describe you in the memory, using he/she, you as you gather new information from this perspective.

Now,

3. Pretend that you are a dispassionate fly on the wall. As the observer on the wall, you are just observing those two people down there, interacting. What do you learn from that perspective?

Now,

4. Float up to a place where you can observe the whole system. Perhaps this is your whole company, your entire extended family, the whole community in which you live. Now what additional awareness do you have, understand, and feel, as you look at that interaction from a larger systems point of view?

Now,

5. Float up to the universe level, or if you could see from God’s eyes, or source, or what ever you call the supreme and eternal level of knowing. From that perspective, what do you now know?

Now,

Come back into your shoes, first position. Recall all of the new knowledge you just accumulated from using your personal perception changer.

Now what do you now see, hear and feel about the situation? Are you feeling better about yourself? Do you think you can relate to the other person better? Do you have a secure sense of power, self efficacy and are you in a much more resourceful state? What actions do you now intend to take? On what time line? What meaning do you now choose to make of the disagreement now?

Of course we don’t know exactly what the other person, or the CEO of the company, or God is thinking, but just by looking at yourselves from their eyes, you have gained very valuable information and resources.

Did you like that?

Now here is a bonus. This is a very quick fix for when you are feeling unresourceful because you were just intimidated by someone in authority.

Imagine that person across from you as a balloon figure like a Ronald McDonald balloon. Now, get out your air pump, and insert it into the balloon figure and start to pump them up with helium. The more you pump, the more inflated and distorted the balloon become, as it rises up to start bouncing off the ceiling, until - - - - POP!!!!!! The balloon explodes into a thousand pieces!!!

If you did this with a very real instance of an abusive authority, you are probably laughing. From the position of a more relaxed body and a funny mind set, what has happened now to you sense of dignity and personal power? They still may be a jerk and they still maybe your boss, but you feel better, don’t you?