The Power of Perception: Unraveling the Illusion and Reconstructing your Empowered Self

The Power of Perception by Drew Taylor

Published by Perception Coaching LLC

Springdale, AR

www.myPowerOfPerception.com

© 2022 Drew Taylor All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

ISBN: 979-8-9869991-0-4

For information about special discounts available for bulk purchases, sales promotions, fundraising and educational needs, contact Drew Taylor at [email protected]

Introduction

Is the way you view your world holding you back?

Do you feel you are constantly at the mercy of external events in your life?

Is the world you live in filled with untrustworthy people, angry people, and scary situations?

Do those around you consistently irritate you, or does it seem like everyone around you is weak?

Have you ever wondered if you are too hard on yourself or others?

Does it feel like you’re missing something…like you’re playing a game without all the rules or pieces?

Life can be better. Even if the outside world stays the same, your world can change.

You may be skeptical. That’s understandable. I’ll make a deal with you. Simply read the rest of this introduction. If you don’t connect with it, then put it back where it was and continue on with your life.

Ordinarily, when we move around in the world, we often act as if it’s just us and life. We act as if that’s the main relationship. Life happens. It creates a reaction in us. We do something, and life reacts. Losing our job makes us depressed. We exercise, and we lose 20 pounds.

This relationship is great when it’s great, except we are missing what is arguably the most important part. We’re ignoring what’s in the middle between us and life. What’s between can make our relationship with life dark and heavy or vibrant and joyful.

That part between us and life is our perception.

Every single one our experiences are filtered through our perception. It affects us in every moment of every day. We cannot experience life without being influenced by our perception, and yet many of us live as if our perception is fixed and unchanged, making it unworthy of evaluation. The opposite is true. It is in the awareness of our perception and the role it plays in how we experience life that we can profoundly improve our lives for the better.

What if…the solution to all of this isn’t in the outside world but in your inner world?

What if…by changing the way you view your world, it could change your world?

What if…the only change needed is a change in the way you experience your life?

To get the most out of this book and in life, we must adopt one fundamental belief: While we can’t always control the external events of our lives, we can control how we experience them. That is the basis of creating empowerment through our perception.

In this book, you will:

Gain a deeper understanding of the impact your perception has on your experience of life.

Develop a new relationship with your perception. \

Be introduced to tools that you can use to work with your perception

Learn to use these insights and tools to help you work directly with your beliefs, thoughts, and emotions to create empowerment in your life.

You didn’t pick up this book by accident. It may have been a friend that recommended it because they read it and thought of you. You may be in a bookstore skimming titles of various books. You might have found this on a friend’s bookshelf or at an estate sale.

Regardless of how we were able to connect, you are in the right place at this moment.

Relationship with Life

Empowerment is about how you experience life. A truly empowering life is one where we can acknowledge and work with the relationship between us and how we experience life. This is where our perception comes in. It is there with us in every moment of our lives, and it is the power within our perception that facilitates empowerment. Our most important relationship is the relationship with the way we experience life. It is within this relationship where we have the most control and potential for empowerment.

Like any relationship, we must give the relationship with how we experience life acknowledgment, attention, and quality time to be healthy. Imagine how poor the quality of your relationship would be with someone you ignore every time you are with them. It is the same with your perception. The more you develop a relationship with your perception, the better your ability to work with it to improve the quality of your life.

The more you develop a relationship with your perception, the better your ability to work with it to improve the quality of your life.

Being disempowered is allowing the world to happen to you. Being empowered is being in control of your experience. Notice I didn’t say that controlling your experience means controlling the external world. Controlling your experience means digging deep enough into your own perception to figure out where it is helping you toward an empowered life and where it is getting in the way.

We cannot always shift life in our favor externally. We can, however, adjust the way we experience life to give us more joy, more empowerment, and the best experience possible within the circumstances that exist. Often enough, doing so ends up shifting our external circumstances for the better as well.

Empowerment also does not mean we will avoid challenges in life. Challenges are a natural part of being human. It is the way we perceive them that turns challenges into either suffering or growth. Do I sound crazy? Can you picture this, or is it making no sense? Let’s go deeper in!

Step Into The Arena

To start, we’ll raise awareness of how your perception affects your experience. Later, we’ll dig deeper into what makes up your perception and the tools and techniques that you can use in your empowerment. There will be different examples used throughout. If one doesn’t connect with you at first, that’s okay. There will be exercises and examples that may not make sense when you first engage with them. Lean in. Trust that it will all come together in the way you need it to.

I’ll ask you a favor. Play all-in. You already know how much you get out of something is tied to how much you engage with it. The more you engage, the better your result. Notice that holding back does just that, holds you back. Don’t read this book like in class or on a webinar, only passively observing while keeping your emotional distance.

The ‘too cool’, ‘already know all this’, or ‘this doesn’t apply to me’ attitudes won’t serve your growth. Put yourself out there. Leave nothing on the table. As Theodore Roosevelt famously said, The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again […]; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly… As you engage with this book, do it with all your being. Step into the arena. Your potential is calling.

Part One

Meeting Your Perception

Chapter 1

Choosing a Path

"Alice: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’

Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.’

Alice: ‘...So long as I get somewhere.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.’"

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This book is not about me and my experiences. It is about you and your journey to empowerment. What do I know?

I have been on this journey, so I will share the relevant parts of my path that can help you on yours. I spent enough time being disempowered to have earned the equivalent of a doctorate degree.

Growing up, I thought I had life figured out. Work hard, change the things in my external world, and happiness will follow. Except it didn’t. As I began to spiral, I searched outside of myself for everything causing me to spin out. And as life does when you ask, it showed them to me. I found problem after problem and went to work on fixing them, believing it would fix me.

The first time, I thought there was some mistake. I fixed the external problem that I believed had created my inner struggle, and nothing inside of me changed. It must have been the wrong external issue.

Again, I asked what the external problem was creating my suffering. I was pointed to something else. With renewed vigor, I attacked that problem until it was solved. My satisfaction immediately dissolved when I realized that still, nothing inside of me had changed. With desperation, I frantically cycled through a pattern of identifying the external problem and throwing myself into its resolution.

The farther down that path I went, the more disillusioned I became. I wanted so badly to get away from being disempowered. Except getting away from being disempowered isn’t the same thing as moving toward empowerment. The more disempowered I became, the less I had the energy or will to fight for my empowerment.

Gradually, and then suddenly, my experience of life became thick and heavy. As external problems would arise, I would think, what’s the point? Solving that won’t give me what I’m looking for. If life wasn’t the problem and couldn’t be solved, then I must be the problem. Every external situation became reinforcement that I wasn’t cut out for this, that I was doing it wrong. Fear and guilt went from acquaintances to constant companions.

I thought the world was judging me in every situation, and then I would judge myself for not having the courage to put myself into more of those situations. Every sales call I made added to the feeling that I was doing it wrong. Every sales call I didn’t make would affirm that I wasn’t enough. It was a lose-lose. Life had closed in. My comfort zone was rapidly shrinking. I leaned on anything that would ease the discomfort. I searched for something to save me from the present moment, escaping with a movie or a drink, or a song.

I searched for reasons why I had ended up in that place. I bounced back and forth between the beliefs that I was simply unfixable and that someone had done this to me.

Maybe I was just different and destined to struggle more than anyone else. No one else could relate to my problems. I was alone and isolated even in the most crowded of places, and hyper-aware in every conversation. Does my voice sound odd? I wonder if they’re judging me right now. Do they see through this facade I’m working so desperately to hold up? I thought I couldn’t let anyone see the real me.

At a certain point on the disempowered path, everything was a threat. I got to the point that I wouldn’t call in a to-go order because of the discomfort. Cold calls in business made me physically ill. Social situations became opportunities for me to be exposed to myself as weak and inadequate.

Eventually, I came to an existential crossroads. I had locked myself into two choices. I could either go down the disempowered path of blaming the world, which was rapidly causing me to become more and more hostile toward it, or I could go down the path of thinking I was the problem, which was causing me to be hostile toward myself.

What I hadn’t realized yet is that the problem being within me wasn’t a problem as long as the solution was also within me.

I had created the meaning that if the problem was within me, then all of me was the problem. It would mean I was defective and broken. At the time, I wasn’t choosing