Perception

Perception

Maybe you’ve seen this photo before of the kitten looking in the mirror and when he looks in the mirror he doesn’t see a kitten, he sees a lion. It’s all about perception. How you see yourself is how you live, act, behave, or become. If you see yourself as stupid, you’ll make stupid choices. If you see yourself as a success you’ll act successful. If you see yourself as ugly, you’ll think you’re ugly. If you see yourself as a failure you’ll behave like a failure. Our perception is everything.

It’s not just true with ourselves. It true of how we view others, or our situations, or life’s problems or issues. If we perceive someone is not telling us the truth, we assume they are lying even if they are not. If we perceive the worst in a relationship, then that is what we’ll get out of the relationship. If we perceive everyone at work is out to get us, even if they aren’t, we’ll act like they are and treat them accordingly. Perception. It can be accurate or it can be false. More times than not our perception hurts us because we perceive things about ourselves or others that aren’t true and it affects how we treat others, react, live, or deal with situations.

Just think how different our lives might become or be if we would have realistic perceptions or if we based our perceptions on facts, truth, or reality? If we saw ourselves as others truly see us would be have more confidence? Feel pretty? Take more risks? Walk with our head a little higher? What if we saw others or our situations in the light of truth and reality would we treat others differently? Act differently? Handle situations differently? Would we realize that not every person is bad or out to get us or hurt us? Would we stop hurting others?

It’s tough sometimes to see the good in ourselves when we’ve been beat down. It’s tough to see the good in others when we have no trust or confidence in others. However just because one person told us we might not amount to anything, there are a 1000 people out there to tell us how great we are. There might be one person who hurt us, but there are a thousand people out there who we can trust and accept us as we are. We cannot base all our perceptions of people, ourselves, or our situations on past situations, past relationships, or past hurts or insecurities. Each person, situation, issue, job, relationship, etc…is unique and different. It’s hard to not be shaped negatively by our past experiences, but it is also possible for us to be shaped in a positive way by our experiences both our bad and good ones, if we seek God to help us determine our perception. Perception can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it depends whether we see a scrawny kitten or a powerful lion.

Each of us are great in God’s eyes. We are in His image, We are His, and He loves us as we are, but wants to see us reach our purpose, potential, and plan for our lives He has for us. He also wants us to learn from our mistakes, the mistakes of others, and He doesn’t want us going through life thinking the worse because of our past hurts or pains, but to renew our thinking daily and learn to fully trust in His power.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” 1 Peter 2:9a(NIV)