What is the difference between fact and interpretation

I was ready for a confrontation and adrenaline was pumping through my body. My breathing was shallow, my muscles were tense, and my brain was in fight mode. Fortunately for me, I was stopped by another colleague who was a bit older and who knew me well enough to see the signs of an impending confrontation.

He pulled me into his office and made me sit down. Without saying a word, he sat behind his desk and took several deep breaths. I was not about to lose my mojo. I got up to leave, but he motioned for me to sit.

As I looked at him, I found myself mimicking his breathing and felt the charge leave my body. After several seconds, he raised an eyebrow and invited me to share what was going on. I learned a lot that day about myself and the dangers of interpretation. I avoided a harmful confrontation that would have had potentially drastic consequences on my career. I also discovered that just because I felt something strongly does not mean that the feeling was accurate.

Interrupting the flow of emotions long enough to calmly evaluate the situation saved me from an embarrassing incident. You see, there is always thought before the emotion. Emotions do not rise by themselves. They rise because a thought, belief or interpretation has triggered the emotion.

We know that in the absence of data, we create our own meaning, based on our worldview remember the story you created about the little girl in the photograph? We also know that there is always thought before emotion. It just should not be confused with fact. As valid as it may seem, as strongly held as it may be, it is only one of many possible stories that you have created to fit the facts as you perceive them.

See, it gets a little tricky once you start paying attention to this. Once we understand just how vulnerable our perceptions are to obfuscation by our world-view, we become a lot less attached to our particular interpretation, and more open to considering the views of others. This open and modifiable stance makes it possible to see things that we are otherwise blind to. Consider the following simple experiment.

Most people, upon seeing this for the first time, are unable to count them accurately, even though they know that there is some kind of trick to it. It seems like such a simple thing. If fish were scientists they would be the last ones to discover water.

When we learn a new word, we tend to encounter it everywhere. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account.

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