This week’s article talks about reality as we perceive it and not as it actually is, causing us to make hasty and wrong decisions
Marilyn Luis Dias
There are three truths - my truth, your truth and the truth, goes a Chinese Proverb. Perception is fluid. What appears to be one thing to you might appear to be a totally different thing to another. How we perceive the things around us is an experience created by our five senses working together with our accumulated memories, thus forming our own perceived reality. As a result, perception differs from person to person based on each one’s personal narratives.
For years people believed that the earth was flat because that is how it appeared. Then they believed that the earth was stationary because that was how it felt. But we know now that both beliefs are false because someone dared to take another approach and observe the earth from an entirely different perspective.
Evolution has had a huge part to play in how we perceive reality for survival purposes. You see, the real world is complex with many invisible processes at work. Our minds adapt to this complexity by constructing a reality based on individual past experiences, as a hack to help ensure our survival in ‘do or die’ moments. For example, you see some movement in the grass and you immediately infer that it’s a snake based on what you learnt or saw in the past. Warning signals are sent to the brain, “Do not touch. Get out of there soon.” It could have been just as easily a frog or a lizard or even the breeze.
In other words, our perceived reality is shaped by our beliefs and experiences, which then affects how we assess a given situation.
For example, you see a knife on the table and the immediate perception is “danger”, because perhaps growing up, we were constantly warned by adults that knives can do serious damage with their sharp edge.
A knife is just a tool, - useful or dangerous depending upon the use we put it to.
In the same way, some investments like ‘stocks and shares’ trigger an immediate rejection, as the first impression of such an asset class is that it is volatile and unsafe. However, just like the knife, that’s not what stocks and shares are prima facie. They are primarily great instruments with which your money can grow by leaps and bounds, if given the chance to, under wise and prudent guidance.
None of us may ever have access to reality per se because we all have our biases born out of our family and cultural backgrounds, and we allow our own personal narratives to construct our reality as we go along.
An example of this was an incident with my kids the other day, who took something out of the microwave and shut the door with a bang. I reprimanded them and moments later I hear the same noise. However, the sound was created by a basketball hitting the floor and not the microwave door. A short while later, I hear the same noise and I still don’t believe it is anything but the microwave door banging shut because the back story here is that my kids don’t heed reprimands.
To make my point, beliefs are deep-rooted and our perceptions about things can make it hard to realize what actually is. But as humans we have the ability to observe reality just the way it is without the interference of memory.
Thus, stocks and shares can help you reach your financial goals faster than other assets.
