I have had a lot of interesting conversations as of late with a variety of different people, friends and family alike. There were a lot of different topics involved but the overall thing that I found most interesting was my own thoughts on perception. By this I mean that as I would discuss various idea or topics with other people it was interesting for me as I listened to focus on the perspectives and perceptions that we all adopted and how those were crucial in the way that we understood things.
We always hear that it is important to make a good first impression, pretty much in every situation. In order to do this successfully, you have to remember your manners, be able to identify from the setting the kind of language that is appropriate to use in the conversation and your role in that conversation, recognize when you are supposed to be a leader or a guest, and lastly you have to not check yourself out at the door. If you are going to make a good first impression you have to be you. Sometimes what we forget is that these first impressions are a test to see if these other people like us or approve of us in some way in an effort to meet their standards: dating, interviews, or strangers in a social setting. When I say that we forget, I mean that we focus too much on trying to meet those standards and just be our true selves.
I understand that we all have a need for being accepted by other people - not everyone and maybe not even whole heaps of people but we want to be accepted by someone else. Everyone will make preliminary and intermediate judgments when it comes to other people and they will make choices according to what they perceive. This is why I think it is so important to be true to yourself and be yourself. I never want someone else to think I am something that I am not and then judge me for it. Still it is also important for us to understand that we don't know why they made the specific decisions. We can't fill in the blanks for their reasoning because we don't know all the facts and extenuating circumstances. Dating examples, if you are stood up on a date you have to think about a few things: how specific were the details (solid time and place or was it relatively vague in order to allow flexibility), are there any number of reasons why they were late or didn't call (travel issues and cell phone issues), and is it possible that life just simply got in the way?
I am trying to say that we all have our own reasons for why something may have occurred but in all reality we won't know for certain. It is easy to choose to be offended or disheartened when we don't get the response that we are looking for but... patience, forgiveness, and an eternal perspective help to keep all things in their proper perspective. Ask questions if you need to but listen with understanding and love. Don't be the hypocrite but be teachable and humble, seeking for correction. This principle is so very important because it would be so sad to actually have to start over and be back at square one when we could have learned from our little failures or mistakes and have stayed farther up on the path of life, fallen forward and not having slipped all the way back to the beginning. It is tragic to have lost so much time and not have learned from the experience.
The other lesson I have learned is simply this: No matter how important it is to make a good impression or to have other people see you in a positive light from their perspective, the way you see yourself and the way that God sees you are most important. Self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence... They are all based on who you are. You have have justifiable self-worth if you love God, do His will, and care more about what He thinks about you rather than what everyone else thinks about you.
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