We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are

This has more to do with judgments about reality than empirical perceptions. It helps me to remember that when the world seems hopeless, it may be that I feel hopeless and confirmation bias has me particularly perceptive to the things in the world that support and justify that feeling. But if I felt differently, I would see the world differently. The world is big and messy and we only ever attend to a small part of it at a time.

I first heard this phrase as management advice: when a person on your team seems to be feeling discouraged or negative about something going on, it helps to understand how they are feeling and why they are feeling that way before you jump in and start changing things. In the spirit of nonviolent communication, negative emotions are a sign of unmet needs, so it helps to go deeper than “the world needs to be different” and ask what needs aren’t being met and how best to meet them.

Origins