Meeting new people - with the past as a judge
Meeting new people can be inspiring or scary. It can feel like a great opportunity or a terrifying sanction. Why we experience it so differently is because of our beliefs, presuppositions, and experiences.
Beliefs make us judge and value person based on many unimportant characteristics. Looks, way of speaking or behaviour - they all affect our judgement before we’ve even exchanged a single word with her or him. There are stereotypes supporting this: If a person has glasses, (s)he is wise. If a person is a little overweight, (s)he must be funny too. If a person has a suit and fit body, (s)he has to be successful, maybe even rich.
However, we know that the need for glasses depends on other thing. Whether the environment and experience have affected a particular gene in a person that, when activated, contributes to a vision impairment. We know that being overweight can actually be challenging situation for a person’s self-image. (S)he may treat the subject with humour. However, (s)he may be ashamed or indifferently reducing her or his love for her-/himself because of that. When we think a little deeper and more broadly, we know that this well-dressed person in a suit may be something else. (S)he may have trained to be fit for example in the military or a prison. The suit may be for going to the first job interview of his life for an office job or as a car salesman.
Our beliefs are reinforced assumptions, memories, and experiences. Because I have been taught this way, or because that has happened in the past, in a similar situation this experience is likely to be exactly the same.
We always assume we know, but we really never know. It is easier for the mind to make quick interpretations based on preconceptions. And sadly often we believe these interpretations as full truths.
Experiences of what it’s like to be with certain kind of a person. In our youth, we may have collected joyful memories of our fellow human beings of that time. If we spent a lot of time at a young age with hippies, we favour them. If we spent time with punks, rockers, rappers, or goths, for example, and the memories from that time are positive, we have a basic assumption and a belief: they are all nice to be with. Oppositely we may dislike some group of people just because at some time our youth we were told to do so.
Why does meeting new people happen through the past and assumptions?
It is for the mind, the brain, easy and effective. Instead of having to reinterpret every situation and thing from the beginning, it is easier to make a presumption based on past knowledge. If you see four wheels, doors, and glass in front of the case in front of you, it’s probably a car you can drive. You might hear a ticking sound, and assume it’s a clock, maybe with humour a time bomb. If you suddenly feel cool, you assume there is a sudden change in temperature.
What if it was a car-like sculpture (it can’t move!)? Maybe a person near you was ticking the tongue with a steady pace in her or his mouth? Perhaps you got the cold shivers of something you just subconsciously thought or experienced?
Equally possible options all of them.
You may still experience resistance at this point for this point of view. You might think the previous options are way more likely to happen. Similarly, the latter options may seem silly. It does not rule out the possibility that they would not be possible. But when our mind works with automation, it interprets the world according to beliefs, assumptions, and probabilities.
Similarly, in the case of meeting new people we tend to act same way. We proceed through interpretations filtered by probabilities, beliefs, experiences, and presuppositions. Ultimately, we favour an old and familiar social environment. We already know something about it, and it’s familiar and safe. Therefore, we are happy to choose people like ourselves and familiar to our existing close circle. However, in doing so we similarly reject new different people from our lives. People, who could be much more than we allow ourselves to assume. We unconsciously prevent them from giving us a tremendous amount of more good in our lives. We strengthen the old familiar and safe established environment with familiar people in our lives. That in turn helps to ensure that life does not develop and become much richer in social terms.
It is important to also listen to the inner instinct of self preservation.
Naturally, not all people are on the same level as you. They might also be going through nasty stages in their lives that can be projected with mean words and deeds into their environment. If a person does not respect your limits or your dignity, (s)he should not be a person in your life at that time. You should always take good care of yourself and make sure you are respected and feeling good. By taking distance from the person who treats you badly, you're doing a favour both for yourself and her or him. You are giving him or her an important doctrine that, at best, makes him or her a person who treats others better over time.
However, if the person is nice, kind, and treats you with respect but is very different from you, at least listen to his or her story. You can only get more out of it. Enjoy something new and different. While you can learn great new things from another world, you can also learn tremendously from yourself.
Meeting new people - a process that enriches your life
Change requires change.
What if you allowed yourself to meet people like you have avoided in the past for various reasons? What if you might be pleasantly surprised? By changing the established laws of your life and opening yourself to the world, meeting new people will surely enrich you both spiritually and experientially.
New great experiences and leaps of development are achieved in the area of discomfort.
Learning and expansion of consciousness begins when you step out of the comfort zone. Leave willingly the familiar and safe social-bubble that you already have experience with. Then it is possible to accept and receive unexpectedly great new things and experiences which otherwise would have been out of your reach.
Allow yourself new opportunities for happiness.
Instead of building a wall and a bubble around your familiar life, what if you opened the doors and windows to all the wonderful things the world has to give you? Without going out you can’t know what beautiful things are out there waiting for you. Similarly, you already know quite well what your current established life will give you. Give yourself the opportunity to experience new sources of happiness.
Live curiously by learning.
Every person’s journey is full of nuanced experiences, doctrines, and insights. Every person’s journey is different, unique. By chatting with as many different people as possible, your world expands tremendously. Instead of just experiencing your own world, you get to experience the world of all the people you meet. The more different a person is than you find yourself to be, the richer and more exotic the experience will be to get to know her or him.
Meeting new people is a gift. Open it by leaving out your past. Listen in depth to what their story about them and the world reveals for you. Your own world may open up to a whole new level of delightful and wonderful proportions.
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