Ep 56 | Perception vs Perspective, and What is Actually True

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today, today's topic is gonna be an interesting one. Today I want to talk about perception and versus perspective, perception versus perspective. And we're gonna talk about it using an interesting story or analyzing what I think to be an interesting question. And stick with me, 'cause you'll see what I'm talking about here shortly. So let's start by first defining perception versus perspective. A perspective is a way is a point of view. Your perspective is an attitude. It is how you interpret the sum total of all of your perceptions. So your perspective is your point of view, and it's a sum total of your perceptions. Now, what in fact is a perception? A perception basically refers to the way you think about or understand someone or something. So perspective is your point of view. Perception is basically, uh, the way we think about or understand someone. Okay, so let's analyze this question. It's something that I've been thinking about for quite some time, and I bet you there's a number of you that have asked yourselves this same question. And this question is Is today's world, is it really experiencing an unusual amount of turbulence in comparison to past, or does it just feel that way? I actually ask myself this all the time. Maybe it has something to do with me getting older, maybe it has something to do with me being a father, maybe it's just more involvement in tax and government and politics and news. Than I had maybe a decade ago or two decades ago, whatever the case may be, I've definitely asked myself the question, is the world just a little bit more chaotic than it's ever been? Or does it just feel that way? And here's the thing, scanning the headlines, it's really easy in my opinion to conclude that something's broken. We had the pandemic, we've got climate change, We've got food shortages. We've got Russia's war in Ukraine. We've got political and economic meltdown in different countries. We have assassin— assassinations. I think most recently of a prime minister in Jap— a former prime minister in Japan. In the US alone, we have inflation, possible recession. We have mass shootings. We had the January 6th event. We've got abortion rights that are highly contested. I mean, it just feels like there's a lot of chaos. However, when I dug further into this, that sense of chaos is actually really difficult to square with, with longer-term data that actually shows that on many metrics, most metrics, the world is generally becoming better off. War in the world is actually rarer today than it has been for most of the past 50 years. When it actually does occur, it's significantly less deadly. Mass atrocities, genocides, they're less common all the time. Life expectancy, literacy, standards of living are all at historic highs. In recent decades, we've seen a decline in overall hunger, child mortality, extreme poverty. I mean, hundreds of millions of people are living above the level that their, their aunts and uncles and grandparents were living just a handful of decades ago. So why, in fact, does it feel like despite all this data, things are, are getting worse. And I think it comes back to this perception and perspective conversation. The first thing is subtle gains are always more difficult to spot than obvious crisis. So the ways in which the world is, is improving tend to be much more gradual and they unfold over generations. They don't happen immediately like crisis. So hundreds of millions of people might live healthier and safer lives than their parents, but those subtle changes over generations that lift entire societies over the course of time make it— it's very hard to notice these incremental changes, these gradual changes. We tend to judge how we're doing compared to those around us and compared to those of our recent past, not compared to previous generations. Again, this makes it less obvious. And frankly, many of the positive changes we see are about prevention. No one notices that wars aren't happening, that family members aren't claimed by more disease, that children don't die in infancy. We don't notice these preventative, these prevention-type changes. However, thanks to social media, the internet, uh, news consumption is 20x what it ever was. Even those who are far from a digital world still get constant updates, and what dominates The headlines, it's not positivity, it's not gain, it's always negative. It's always negative news. It's always war or mass shooting or turmoil or political upheaval. These are the things that get clicks. These are the things that get read. So thanks to the internet, data and news is always available and negative data gets viewed. When people express that they're feeling like the world's falling apart, they're not talking about long-term metrics like life expectancy. They're talking about things happening right now, emergencies, upheaval, things that stand out. And so it's fascinating to think that we're living in this moment of turmoil, but the reality is that's just our perception, given the fact that negativity tends to be more pronounced. It's our perception and our perspective around gains versus crisis. Subtle gains are not followed. Crisis stands out. There's also this degree of uneven optimism. The feeling that the world is getting worse is not a universal one. In fact, it's mostly only held by people in richer countries like the US, like Canada. If you survey people in low-income and middle-income countries like Kenya or, you know, Vietnam, let's say, they tend to express optimism about the future for themselves individually, as well as their societies. And these countries represent most of the world's population, which suggests that optimism is actually, believe it or not, the global mood. But in these richer countries, we don't have that same feeling. Again, that has a lot to do with our perspective, our point of view, and our perception of, of, of what's going on around us. These places I'm talking about, many of them had decades of civil conflict and unrest. They've grown over decades of turmoil to reach a much greater degree of stability. They look at it from a much different lens, a much different vantage point. The last thing that shapes our thoughts and our perception of all this, we're in an era of democratic decline. What that really means is that there's been a fall in the number of existing democracies across the world. The number of democracies in the world has shrunk for the first time since World War II. And when these democracies shrink, you know, Americans who get to spend, who've spent most of our lives in a safe and stable society, the shift really stands out to us. It seems like political crisis all over the place because we're seeing a fall in, in some regard of our established governmental system. And so from our vantage point, it feels like turmoil. But to most that don't know different, it doesn't feel the same. Again, Another conversation around perspective and perception. So where am I going with this whole thing? I'm using this, this conversation today to call attention to the fact that what we believe to be true and what actually is true may not be one and the same. So my focusing question for everybody today, where do you have to take a step back and challenge your own beliefs. Where is it that your perspective, your point of view, or your attitude may be misshaped or misguided? How you're interpreting the total of all of your perceptions, what you believe you're seeing, is it flawed? Where might that be occurring? Is it in business? Is it in relationships? Are you drawing false conclusions in different things of your life? Are you maybe justifying certain things you're doing for sake of feeling better? Where might your perspective be a little disjointed or inaccurate? And what would some self-reflection look like? What would some thinking time look like? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.