Daniel Fortune

To a large degree, our emotional intelligence grows in lock-step with our ability to properly see situations and circumstances through the lens of perception. Perception is awareness but it isn’t complete awareness.

Our individual perceptions are merely an angle of awareness, but those perceptions don’t give us the full picture.

When it comes to accurately understanding other people and how they perceive the world, it’s important to understand the 3 levels of awareness that they filter the world and their experiences in it through.

When perceiving these 3 levels of awareness, it’s important to remember that…

1: People Love to Their Level of Self-Love

I’ve said it before, people can’t share what they don’t have. If they don’t love themselves, they will struggle their whole lives trying to believe someone else loves them, or can love them more than they love themselves.

At the end of each day, our ability to love others and receive love from others is first filtered through our self-image. Our self-image involves our capacity to love ourselves, be confident in our own skin, and show up in the world.

When we lack love for ourselves, our “storehouse” to receive love from others loses space.

This is EXTREMELY important to understand when interacting with others.In relationships, people love to their level of self-love.

2: People Communicate to Their Level of Self-Awareness

Enlightening people or changing someones mind takes a great deal of patience. When intereacting with others, they don’t always appeal to their highest values. Emotions can be tricky and sometimes they over-ride our logic and reasoning when we’re in the heat of battle.

Outside of that, it’s naive to assume that people can or are obligated to see this world through the same perceptions and filters we do.

We’re all interpreting this world and interacting with others based off of the limited awareness of our personal perceptions. While these personal perceptions and experiences are compelling, they aren’t complete awareness. They’re actually very limited.

In communicating with others, we can make the mistake of expecting what’s obvious to us to be obvious to them and this isn’t always the case. More often than not, people are communicating to THEIR level of self-awareness; not ours!

3: People Behave to Their Level of Healed Trauma

Deep… I know!

There’s a very good reason why abused children become either violent or docile adults. Their previous trauma did a good job of encouraging them to either become the villain or victim to survive. As is said, “heal the boy and the man will appear.”

For the person who had a controlling spouse and was abused in their previous relationship, it may be hard for them to conceive that you don’t need them to call you before making any decisions or want to know their whereabouts at all times.

They too may also apologize relentlessly for things that don’t seem like a big deal or become anxious/scared whenever they make a perceived mistake.

The path to assuring or reassuring such a person of their safety and security in being in a relationship with you will take both time and patience, because people behave to their level of healed trauma.

Learning to understand and interact with others at these 3 levels of awareness will help us cultivate more understanding and meaningful relationships.

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