Our perceptions of this crazy world differ. We distort how we see ourselves, work, interaction with friends, the honesty of the IRS, and finding 'that perfect gift' on Christmas Eve.

Your awareness of reality is based on deeply held unrealistic beliefs bound tightly to experiential conditions that pre-empted normal cortex alignments within your brain. Boy, are you screwed. Now, you might expect some "shrink" to tell you that but I certainly won't. You're not paying me enough.

Check out the following "Test Your Perception" activity page. It's new, it's fun, and I'm certain you'll never guess the answer.

There are a lot of unique ways to distort the world around us. Here are some that you might be using right now:

• Overgeneralization - take one event or fact to make a universal law. I tried to model the flow of a non-aqueous phase liquid in a saturated heterogeneous porous media using a three-dimensional stochastic differential but failed; therefore, "I'm no good at math."
• Stereotyping - incorrectly labeling whole classes of people, things, behaviors, and experiences. Pro football players are egotistical, overpaid, jocks" - no wait - that one's correct.
• Filtering - being able to block events. After receiving a number of compliments and one criticism you only focus on the criticism.
• Black and White - no shades of gray - you either are successful or a miserable failure, did the job right or did it wrong, behaved in class or sat in the hall.
• Self-Blame - You blame yourself for everything (pathologically responsible) and suffer from incessant apologizing.
• Personalization - everything relates to you - could lead to being a narcissistic (inflated idea of one's importance). You have a need for constant admiration or attention.
• Mind reading - you know what folks think about simple things you do, wear, or say.
• Projection - everyone feels the way you do or everyone in the universe is just like you-even the three-eyed quadrupeds from the planet Zargon.
• In Control - Either you're in total control of the universe or everyone else is. For more on control look at the section on worrying.
• Emotional reasoning - rely on emotions to interpret reality and direct actions. Emotions are hard to ignore as they quite often trigger bio-chemical reactions in your brain. You feel worthless - you must be worthless. You feel ugly - you must be ugly. You're confronted by someone - the adrenaline gets pumping - and you become defensive.
• Assuming - the worst will happen in all situations regardless of what the surrounding facts would indicate.
• Fairy tale living - there is always a happy ending and bad things don't happen to good people.

Your distortions foster other forms of mistaken realities and can lead to negativism or a lack of motivation. Once again, blame it on your brain. Years of programming causing you to lose sight of how the world really is.

So, the brain takes the signals from your senses and converts them into electrical signals, getting passed via neurotransmitters. For example, it starts with your smell receptors - to your thalamus - to your primary and secondary cortex - with a stop over in the association cortex. Sounds real complex to me. Check the following links for a more graphic representation of how male and female brains function.

Distorting life feels almost like being hypnotized. Hypnotized people can accept that their pants are on fire while standing in a full swimming pool. If you are doing this, first get out of the swimming pool because you'll wind up like a prune. Don't let distortions derail life. The degree to which you are un-hypnotized is in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can accept about yourself. Unfortunately, it's difficult to change our current level of awareness because what we picture in our minds IS THE TRUTH - regardless of how faulty or distorted it might be. Plus we seek only those experiences that support our picture of reality - and reject anything else.

• Monitor how you perceive various situations
  

  Note: Monitoring what's going on around you is very important to many aspect of being a growth or change motivated individual (e.g. Someone that is always looking for ways to make improvements and experience new things.)

• List those times you tend to distorted situations.
• Look for clues to remind you of those situations-places, people, goals, and your biological time clock.
• When you catch yourself altering reality a little:
1. Stop and relax.
2. Check your emotions.
3. Classify your distortion.
4. Consider how much it's costing you.
5. Affirm who you are while rejecting the distortion.
6. Displace the distortion with an appreciation of the way things really are.
7. Monitor for that distortion to appear again.

The final unit, The Puzzle comes together, spends more time on how to create a Change Me program to address changes you'd like to make including eliminating distortions. No, don't go there now. Check out the next unit about putting mistakes to work.