The Greatest Benefit Of Doubt
Let me tell you a story…
In 1904 Claude Monet exhibited one of his remarkable paintings called “Houses of Parliament”. Monet had tried to capture an image of the Palace of Westminster overlooking the Thames in the early morning. If you look at it, the detail that will catch your eye right away is the color of the fog. It is purple!
When Monet showed his painting to the world, many art critics talked about the interesting vision of the artist or about the original choice of colors that he had used. But the true shock came a few days later when the people of London left their houses early in the morning and to their great surprise saw what they had never noticed before – the sun rays coming through fog had, indeed, made it look purple!
Before Monet’s painting, people looked at the same fog almost every day as they went to work, but most of them only now saw truly it for the first time. Their perception of reality had changed overnight, because of one single person who painted ‘by impression’, not by what he had been taught.
If you think about it, our reality is not something that objectively exists. It is woven from thousands of perceptions. We believe certain things, because at some point in our lives we have accepted them as true. NOT because they ARE a true reflection of reality.
I have a question for you… Have you ever talked to a person and just had a gut feeling that they were lying to you? Or when you were telling yourself a story, you could not get rid of the feeling that you are not being honest with yourself? What did it feel like?
I know that when I hear a lie I feel uneasy, upset, embarrassed or even angry. I believe that we all have a built-in lie detector that stirs up a whole range of negative emotions when we hear something that is not true.
Now let me ask you another question… How did you feel when someone put you down or told you that you could not do something? I am going to take a guess and say that you felt uneasy, upset, embarrassed or angry. Do you know why? Because your intuition was signaling to you that you had been told a LIE.
There are no Universal beauty or ugliness standards. There are no set limits for the amount of wealth and material possessions that a person should have, to be considered “rich” or “poor”. There are no IQ test or intelligence levels that make one person superior to another in the eyes of God.
We, ourselves, create these standards and put labels on ourselves and those around us. And we often ignore the fact that every single judgment that is made is just someone else’s point of view. Not the absolute truth.
When we are born, we do not have an opinion about who we are, what an ideal body should look like and what is possible or impossible for us to achieve. We learn all these opinions later in life and we accept them as truths.
Gradually these beliefs become the bases for new assumptions and opinions. For example, if as a child you came to believe that you are not talented enough, this belief drags with itself a whole bunch of other negative assumptions; “I won’t be able to get a good job”, “I will have to work very hard to compensate for my lack of talent”, “I can’t open my own business, because I lack ____” and so on. When we put our faith in lies, we feed them and they become more powerful. Until one day they take over our mind.
It seems that the more knowledgeable we become, the more opinions we make about ourselves and the world around us, the more that fog of knowledge clouds our ability to perceive the real truth.
The easiest way to cut through this fog is to use your natural skepticism and doubt. Whenever someone offends you or makes you feel unworthy, sad or inadequate – doubt every word this person is saying. Whenever a little voice in the back of your mind tells you that you cannot do something – be skeptical! Whenever you share your opinion with another person, ask yourself, “Is it true? Or am I passing on gossip, my personal assumption or something I once overheard someone else say?”
Become aware of the messages that you are delivering to people around you, as well as ones that you are receiving. Learn to tell the difference between helpful feedback and negative programming. Question every message that stirs negative and disempowering emotions inside of you. Because there is a big possibility that you have been told a lie.
“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” - Doug Larson
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Tags: awareness in communication, benefit of doubt, boost self-confidence, dealing with negativity, negative beliefs, overcoming self-doubts
