Well, we are in the middle of October and I have finally found a mantra that resonates with me currently. If you joined me for my September chat date, you probably know that I considered dropping the mantras. But! I changed my mind.
As I looked and thought of mantras, nothing sounded right for this month. I wanted something a little spooky, but also something that spoke to me in my personal life. Lately I noticed how different each person’s perception can be and how it can affect their lives. How two people can go to the same event, and yet experienced different things. There’s something wonderful and not so great about perception. It can bond and divide us, it can cause us stress and bring us relaxation, and it can do a lot of harm and a lot of good. Lately, I witnessed a situation where someone took their perception as fact and cannot be swayed from it. Their perception caused a division in a relationship and caused a wall to be built. Words that were meant as harmless were taken as an insult.
I’m sure we have all done this and we’ve all been there. With perception, we make sense of the world and we often take it as fact when it is nothing more than an assumption or an opinion. That’s why I picked this mantra. Just because I think it, doesn’t make it true. It also works for Halloween as I continue to read and watch spooky things. So when I wake up in the middle of the night freaked out about a ghost or some other terrifying entity, I can tell myself that thinking it doesn’t make it true. It typically doesn’t work on my very tired brain, but so far my world has been ghostless so there’s something to be said about that.
Anyways, I want to use this mantra to remind myself to be open-minded. I think we all need a reminder sometimes that our perception can be faulty. Sometimes it seems as though each of us lives in a completely different world due to our unique perception of events, situations, and people. It really is quite amazing to think about. Where someone sees beauty another may see the mundane. And you can even find these differences of perception in little ways like someone thinking they’re being helpful while the person they’re helping may see it as a nuisance.
This month, I’d like to pay a close eye on what my perception is and how it may be causing stress in my life and affecting my mental well-being. So for this month I’ll be telling myself just because I think it, doesn’t make it true.