Perception Determines The Quality Of Life

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Hi everybody! Smile

Perception determines the quality of your life, for with perception comes an emotional impact of what you experience. The emotional impact is recorded for future reference and in a significant way determines how you will perceive and feel about future experiences. This is how perception comes to determine the quality of your life in the present and in the future. Much of the emotional impact of precieved experience is not available to our conscious mind. So, our only hope of discharging some of this negative emotional charge or content, depends perhaps on the further development of neurology for answers. Any thoughts on the matter? You are what you perceive, identity is your experience! I am going back to my room now!

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@boagie,

This is all quite true. A couple of highlights if I might...

boagie wrote:

The emotional impact is recorded for future reference and in a significant way determines how you will perceive and feel about future experiences.

This here is the key. I believe experiences stored in memory are "colored" with their associated emotional overtones. In this way, our perceptions emotionally Stamp our Memory Circuits. Was it a good song? Does that perfume evoke a pleasant memory? I don't like dogs (as a toddler I witnessed my sister being mauled by one). On and on and on it goes. It help affirm how the person evolves overtime, how we're shaped by our perceptions and experiences and increasingly become "this thing" that is the culmination of our emotions, experiences and perceptions.

boagie wrote:

So, our only hope of discharging some of this negative emotional charge or content, depends perhaps on the further development of neurology for answers.

Yea, and understanding that this is what's happening, in the mind of the experiencer can be a practical benefit we all can enjoy. Unfortunately, I feel like there's an element of awareness that I'm missing. Other than just knowing this is what's going on, I believe there's an essential element of this that I'm missing that's more important *sigh*.

Good stuffs

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@boagie,

I basically agree boagie. Still, when it's natural for me to percieve things negatively, even though I recognize that perception determines the quality of life, I have trouble shifting my perceptions so as to make them positive. I try though. Oh man do I.

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@Deftil,

Khethil,

"Yea, and understanding that this is what's happening, in the mind of the experiencer can be a practical benefit we all can enjoy. Unfortunately, I feel like there's an element of awareness that I'm missing. Other than just knowing this is what's going on, I believe there's an essential element of this that I'm missing that's more important *sigh*." quote

I am not sure I am understanding you properly, is what is missing a means of dealing with the negative irrational beliefs that we all have about ourselves?

Deftil, Smile

"I basically agree boagie. Still, when it's natural for me to percieve things negatively, even though I recognize that perception determines the quality of life, I have trouble shifting my perceptions so as to make them positive. I try though. Oh man do I." quote

I quite understand, I think we all do, it is a problem we all face. The most interesting approach to the problem I have found is something called, Rational- emotive- behavioural- therapy, a cognitive therapy started by the late Abert Ellis. It is examining the irrational beliefs we have about ourselves whether the irrationalism is caught at the thought stage, the emotional stage or the behavioural stage, if caught at the behavioural stage it can be linked bact to the cognitve. It is a fairly impressive approach, and in the absence of any major breakthroughs in neurology, I think it is the best approach available.

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@boagie,

Hey boagie,

when you talk about neurology, are you talking about the biological effects our brain has on our perception before its then related to our emotions.

i will look up neurology, but for sake im not educated in that field and just wanted to know if thats what you meant. thanks

oh and also the R.E.B therapy sounds interesting.

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@Joe,

Boagie, I agree with you, but I feel it is hard to control how you perceive reality. Learning how to perceive by knowing what to perceive is IMO the important factor.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Hi everybody!

Perception determines the quality of your life, for with perception comes an emotional impact of what you experience. The emotional impact is recorded for future reference and in a significant way determines how you will perceive and feel about future experiences.

if our perception is based on memory and the emotions linked to that memory, where does the circle begin and or start. or does it start over the moment we perceive something. Possibly it only started once we were born and let either memory, emotion, or perception be the guiding factor?

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@Joe,

Perception determines the quality of life, or does the quality of life determine perception? It seems to me that the latter is true rather than the former, though the former does have some wisdom to it.

Perception does influence our quality of life. Depression certainly degrades the quality of life. But perception of life is also the result of life. We develop our perspective through our experience.

I say that quality of life determines perception more than perception determines quality of life because quality of life invents perception in the first place. Only after we have some perspective does said perspective influence our quality of life, and that perspective, it seems, must come from what we have seen of life.

Oh, and your Mr. Ellis, Boagie, seems to have reproduced something similar to the way Buddhists go about handling the same problem. I'll have to do some reading when my school work is less oppressive.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

I am not sure I am understanding you properly, is what is missing a means of dealing with the negative irrational beliefs that we all have about ourselves?

I think so, or very close to it.

It's an aspect to which a number of folks here have alluded to: That practical benefit of realizing such a truth. There seems to be therein a strong implication that if we realize this, then we can therefore do something about it. Yes, this is a fallacy - to be sure - but my sense is that the implication exists nonetheless.

So I understand how perception colors my memories and associations. Now what? Does that help? How might I steer such a thing? Perhaps there is no "steering" or practical benefit to such a realization. Sometimes a cake is just a cake.

Thanks

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@Khethil,

Hi everyone!! Smile

Wow! quite a response to this topic! Well yes that is the problem, knowing the situtation we are all in does not remedy the situtation. I think the best we can do is catch those irrational beliefs that we acquire in our journey through this world through the method of the examination of those irrational beliefs about our selves, thus, the method introduced by Dr Albert Ellis. Thomas, it is true that everyone is presented with a different set of circumstances about the physcial world we inhabit, and our indoctrination on a cognitive level starts before we have a rational faculty. So in all probability our parents give us the cognitive and many times the emotional foundation for the interpretation of the physcial world as our object, humanity is a reactionary organism, but it is the subject which gives that objective world meaning and emotional tone. As far has neurology goes, they can detect with the stimulus introduced, just what parts of the brain then light up, the emotional centre is fairly primitive, part of the reptilion brain I believe, much older than the development of the frontal lobes. It is perhaps with neurology however that we might gain in the future somewhat more control of over our reactionary natures. For some the irrational beliefs they have about themselves seems little more than an inconvience, while still others are crippled with negative irrational beliefs about themselves, which further experience of the world around them ony tends to fortify, due to that preconditon of negative irrational beliefs.

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@boagie,

Can we analyse something too much?

I believe the quality of our thoughts will determine the quality of our life.

Optimists and pessimists are correct, each is correct from his own particular point of view. And more than not, that point of view is the result of our pre-conditioning.

Some believe we are what our past made us. And that we can only play with the hand we have been dealt.

It is worth remembering that it is not about the hand we have been dealt, it's more about how we play that hand.

Finally, the habits of a lifetime can be hard to change but NOT impossible.

1 Reply

@Rose phil,

Rose,

Rose wrote:

Can we analyse something too much?" quote

Who was it that said, the unexamined life is not worth living"?

"I believe the quality of our thoughts will determine the quality of our life."

And the quality of our thought are dependent upon the quality of our perceptions.

"Optimists and pessimists are correct, each is correct from his own particular point of view. And more than not, that point of view is the result of our pre-conditioning." quote

Yes, I think we have well established that the source of irrational thoughts are in large part do to preconditioning.

"Some believe we are what our past made us. And that we can only play with the hand we have been dealt." quote

"Life can only be understood backward, but must be live forward." Kierkenguard

"It is worth remembering that it is not about the hand we have been dealt, it's more about how we play that hand." quote

No I do not think it is, it is very much the hand you are dealt. So much of what holds us back is not even avialable to the conscious mind.

"Finally, the habits of a lifetime can be hard to change but NOT impossible."

Well yes, it is none the less a hard row to hoe.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Hi everybody!

Perception determines the quality of your life, for with perception comes an emotional impact of what you experience. The emotional impact is recorded for future reference and in a significant way determines how you will perceive and feel about future experiences. This is how perception comes to determine the quality of your life in the present and in the future. Much of the emotional impact of precieved experience is not available to our conscious mind. So, our only hope of discharging some of this negative emotional charge or content, depends perhaps on the further development of neurology for answers. Any thoughts on the matter? You are what you perceive, identity is your experience! I am going back to my room now!

I do agree that perception determines quality of life. There are definitely right and wrong ways to deal with the emotional stimuli, and by properly training perception one can manifest a more fulfilling reality.

I think Didymos said something about the quality of life determining perception, but I do not think this is the case. Too many people live a high quality life, but still suffer from poor perspectives because they are not capable of responding correctly to emotion. Also, many live what someone my call a low quality life, but still have a good perception on life.

I guess it kind of matters how you define quality of life. Is living in with a balance emotional composition considered a high quality life, or is a high quality life formed by having all the comforts one needs? In other words, is the good life mental or material?

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@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus, Smile

"Guess it kind of matters how you define quality of life. Is living in with a balance emotional composition considered a high quality life, or is a high quality life formed by having all the comforts one needs? In other words, is the good life mental or material?" quote

Smile

I think that the good quality life is more assured through a healthy mental attitude, even if one has great wealth, with a wretched mental attitude life will be of poor quality anyway.

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@Theaetetus,

Quality of life transcends material circumstances. Quality of life is, well, the qualities of our living - material and mental.

I think this is a two way street. If environment has any influence upon perception of reality, then one's quality of life must, at least in part, determine perception. But perception also influences the way we understand our environment, thus perception influences our quality of life.

The way we perceive reality is not set in stone at birth, thus our environment must influence that perception.

1 Reply

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas, Smile

I agree Thomas, it can get very complex, but the quality of the object of our perception certainly would influence the quality of perception thus thought. That is one reason I believe for added concern over the quality of the environment, as the quality of the environment as object declines, so to must the quality of our perceptions, thought, and quality of life.

In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan wrote:
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

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@boagie,

That is very true.

1 Reply

@TheHSP,

TheHSP wrote:

That is very true.

TheHSP,

Welcome aboard the good ship philosophy forum TheHSP glad to see you posting, did you do an intro, if you did I guess I missed you. Sorry about that, I would have like to greet you formallly. At anyrate, again welcome!!! Agreeing with me you certainly have started off on the right foot----------lol!!!

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