Pretend you are at a party and you see a handsome man. He is just the sort of man you like, so you want to go over. But at that precise moment he turns and looks at you with a clear “I’m not at all interested” look.

You stop dead in your tracks, and make a beeline for the buffet instead. After that you feel uncomfortable. It’s the white outfit, which is way too girlish and naive. Perhaps you should have worn the V-cut black dress. Maybe yesterdays french-fries are showing all over your hips in this monstrous filmy thing. At the party, you don’t mingle much. You wait for the long, boring evening to end. Whereupon you trudge home, alone, to your empty apartment.

Now suppose you are on the other side and you are the male. Here’s what may be happening for you. You have just taken a sip of your cocktail, and it is sour as a green lemon. You purse your lips to try to keep from spitting it out. You are noticing nothing but the bad taste in your mouth- and you are thinking of how to get rid of it without drawing attention.

Now suppose you were Mr. Handsome in this scenario. If you were, the truth is you never even saw this woman . You were too busy with what to do about your drink. But later at the buffet you saw her and you wanted to approach. But she was too aloof. She had that look. And you thought, why ask for rejection? So you didn’t approach her.

I bet there have been times that you have been like this in your life. You have been 100% sure you knew the very thoughts in someone else’s head. And you have been 100% sure this was reality. And, like this story, I’m sure you missed out on something. Perhaps it was the soulmate of your dreams that you never even met.

Now we usually don’t see it, but this kind of thing happens to us all the time. We think we know how the world is. We think we know what goes on in the rest of the world and other people’s heads. But what we are truly perceiving is the world according to us- our judgments, assessments, and a huge load of past experiences and firmly held beliefs that color them.

Can you imagine how many opportunities we miss that we don’t even know about?

Stay tuned to my articles as we explore the difference between perception and reality, and how you can get power in your life by setting your limiting beliefs and assumptions aside. The question will constantly be, “Do I really know what I think I know?” It is an engaging question, and one that can intrigue us forever with endless possibilities.