I had an epiphany today. Feelings are all a matter of perception. Your feeling are entirely base don’t he way you perceive things. Say I’m having a conversation with someone. They say something specifically to convey a certain point but you hear something else and therefore perceive something else. Case in point: I once knew a girl named Katherine. We were loose acquaintances. One day we were having a conversation about past relationships and discovered that at one point in time, we had dated the same guy. The conversation moved to his new girlfriend and we were talking about how awful she was. I said very casually, “I love John but sometimes he has awful taste in women”.  I didn’t think much of this comment because on my part there was no malicious intent. But she heard an insult. The girl literally began to cry at the table. I had no intentions to hurt her. If there was any insult to be made, I would have backhandedly included myself. That was not my goal. Perception. Can you imagine how many people have been hurt and acted out based on something they perceive. How many crimes of passion have been committed at the assumption of nothing?  For the obsessive, perceptions can rule you. You become compulsive in the face of something you feel you can’t control. Think of all the women around this world right now, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for some guy to call them—thinking that there is something they have done wrong. That same guy could be in the hospital, or dead, or in trouble, or really pre-occupied with something more important. That woman’s perception makes her crazy. Our tainted opinions and misconceptions make us sitting ducks to paranoia and hurt feelings.

Today’s Task: Let go of perceptions. There are so many mistakes we make when we act on perceptions. When you assume you make and ass out of you. I don’t know why people add and me, cause really; you’re the only one with egg on your face. It becomes really liberating when you no longer allow people’s actions to dictate your feelings. I’m not saying that someone’s blatant disrespect should affect you, but there lack of reaction to a situation shouldn’t send you spiraling out of control. Understand that not everything is about you. Grasping that concept will make your life a lot easier and a lot less stressful.