Allison Sharpe

DISCOVERING OUR REALITY!

I’m going to go over chapter 5. It was an extremely

interesting topic to me. So, here we go! Accompanied by

some thought provoking a pretty funny photos, I will talk about discovering our reality! So first I shall talk about what reality is. In

modern day times, people think of reality as everything that is real, whether it can be seen, touched, or accessed. Ironically enough, reality is

not real. Reality is what each individual THINKS is real;

reality is created in the mind (Marteney and Sterk 70).

CHAPTER 5!

Now, onto the Perception Process. Our own personal

realities are created based upon the process of perception. We

choose and interpret everything from external sources in order to

create our own individual realities. There are the three

steps that make up the perception process:

1) Selecting 2) Sorting

3) Interpreting

(72)

PERCEPTION PROCESS

Selecting is a filtering and awareness process. We use our senses to filter out and become

aware of our external environment (72)

Sorting is the prioritizing process of perception. Each process of

sorting is unique and based upon our experiences (73). For

example, let’s say you’re walking in the mall with a few of your

friends and you see an outfit that is absolutely to-die-for. The shoes, the shorts, the top… Everything. Now you and each of your friends

will have a unique way of organizing each article of clothing

that makes up the outfit, and selecting, in your own mind,

which piece of clothing you like the best.

SELECTING AND SORTING

So let’s move onto step 3. Interpreting. Interpreting can be described as giving meaning to all of the information that we have selected and sorted (73). Let’s go back to that cute outfit that you and your friends saw in the mall. Maybe you LOVED the shirt the mannequin was wearing, but maybe it was

sporting an absolutely disgusting hat. That piece of

information, the hat, may stick out to you the most because it

destroys the whole outfit.

INTERPRETING

Now let’s move onto the filtering processes. Our psychological condition can definitely affect how we look at something (74). For

example, seeing a romantic movie can be looked at completely differently depending on one’s mood. If a person was happy about their love life, seeing that romantic movie would be cute, and you’d feel happy for the movie characters because they would share the

same feeling of love that you do. But If you were to watch that same move when you were depressed about your failure of a love life and saw that cute movie, you may want to throw your popcorn at the screen in angst because you so yearn to have the love that

the actors share on the screen.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION AS A FILTER

Another way of filtering would be our physical condition. Our way of looking at things can definitely be

affected by our age, health, biological cycles, hunger (74)…

Let’s talk about hunger. Imagine you just hit up the Chinese Buffet And absolutely stuffed yourself.

Then, you come home to find that your awesome boyfriend has

made you a fantastic steak dinner. Because you just stuffed yourself silly at that Chinese restaurant, the steak would look awful. You just stuffed yourself silly and you feel as if you never want to LOOK

at food again. However, after a long day of work and coming

home to that, you would be one happy camper and that may just

be the best steak you’ve ever eaten.

PHYSICAL CONDITION AS A FILTER

Let’s move onto language as a filter. The more limited our language, the more limited our reality (74). If you

live in sunny San Diego and are talking to your pen pal who lives in Alaska, you would have less ways to describe each other’s environments. There are limited ways for a person who lives in a snowy environment to describe a sunny environment and

vice versa.

LANGUAGE AS A FILTER

Of course, formal learning is another

factor that shapes our reality. Our education teaches us how to be

good people and teaches us what is socially acceptable (75). Staring and

pointing at that hobo may seem ok when

you’re a little kid, but as an adult? Just rude.

FORMAL LEARNING AS A FILTER

Experiences and expectations are the last two filters that I will be

talking about. Experiences are first hand learning

activities. Expectations are perceptions that are going to agree with based upon

what we already believe the actually event is. Self-

expectations dictate how we act towards other people and ultimately affect our judgment and self-esteem

(75).

EXPERIENCES AND EXPECTATIONS AS FILTERS

Now, I’m going to move onto talking about factors that affect how we interpret information. Closure

is a way for us to make sense out of our environment. It’s basically our mind filling in the blanks on missing data. It allows us to understand what we’re observing (75). So, for example, if you see that cute guy, or girl, and you check them out and they’re just not responding to your obvious

interest, you fill in the blanks for closure. You’re just not their type. Or, they are already taken.

CLOSURE

Now, I’m going to talk about one last thing. Stasis. Simply put, stasis

means “at rest.” And craving beings desire stasis. It is leaving things as they are, their usual state of being. Without modification. Stasis is our

comfort zone (81). Here’s an example of stasis. You fall in love. You’re together with that special someone for a few years. You’re

living together. Every morning the two of you would wake up and eat breakfast in the kitchen together and talk about the day that you ahead of you. That was your

comfort zone, your stasis. Well, when the two of you broke up and

you no longer shared that breakfast together, your stasis was altered.

You left your comfort zone and noticed flaws about your ex that you

never saw before.

STASIS

Well, that’s it for my presentation! I hope it an interesting learning experience (I hope you had a few

laughs, too).

Marteney, Jim, and Jack Sterk. "5; Discovering Our Reality." Communicating Critical Thinking. Agoura

Hills, CA: Leadership Communication, 1990. 70-81. Print.