The power of having choices, the ability to change our perception. We cannot change other people or situations, only our thoughts about them. According to Viktor Frankl who survived concentration camp in the Holocaust, the last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. How powerful and empowering is that? When a client feels stuck, helping them to consider choices and options will get them unstuck. Ultimately, we want them to be able to know they can choose their own way Life.
Think of a time when you had one opinion of someone, and you shifted your thoughts and they seem different. What happened to create the shifts? Often the shift occurs because you learn to appreciate something about the person, or there might be shared values. Here's an example. When I worked at a job many years ago, I did not like one of my supervisors, and neither did anyone else. So I felt very justified.
One day, I began talking to her heart to heart and my perception shifted. I gained true respect for her. It's not about what you see, but how you respond and your response is based on your interpretation or your beliefs? How do we get off track from reality and into our interpretation of reality? Let's consider the ladder of inference. This is adapted from Chris Sargeras and found in Peterson GIS Fifth Discipline.
At the bottom of the ladder is pure data, reality as it actually appears. This would be as if we took a video of everything happening around us. However, we cannot take everything in. So we select data to which we attend. While we select may depend on our culture, age, gender community, any number of filters that we have. After we select data, we then interpret the data based again on culture, age, gender, and so forth, and develop reasons to support our interpretations.
Eventually, we draw conclusions based on our assumptions and rules that we or others have set for us. These assumptions become the judgments and opinions that we so dearly believe in. The farther that we get from reality, the more we create beliefs, and these beliefs become a shortcut to making decisions. They are like preconceived notions we tap into to save us time and energy. Here's an example of how beliefs are formed. When I was five years old, I found a cute little snake in my backyard, a green garter snake I was thrilled with my discovery.
So I put it in a box and took it in my home to show my mother. Well, guess what her response was, she became upset at the side of the snake in a house and told me in no uncertain terms to take it outside. From that day forward, I have been afraid of snakes of all kinds. And a more scientific explanation of how much we can actually comprehend. Toward Norris trenders that Danish science and philosophy writer notes in his book, The user illusion, the fact is that every single second, millions of bits of information flood in through our senses, but our consciousness processes only about 40 bits per second at most millions and millions of bits of are condensed into a conscious experience that contains practically no information at all. We did not really have any accurate awareness of what is happening.
But we and our clients make judgments about what we perceive and we keep rerunning never stopping to reconsider