One of the funniest things about perception – we think we form the center of the universe. Everybody’s universe. And we start expecting – people to accept us, love us, respect us, involve us and be kind to us. However, we forget two important things:

1. Every single person is busy living their own life. A life where you may or may not matter.
2. Do you ever think about others in the same way as you expect them to think about yourself?

Once we understand this equation, we are ready to take the next step. Sometimes we feel abandoned, isolated or have questions about our life purpose, the reason for our existence, etc. In the absence of satisfactory answers, these situations can lead to an existential crisis. It can even result into bodily illnesses. But being able to get to the root cause of this misery can be a helpful tool to elevate ourselves.

In order to understand perception, we may need to go back all the way to the womb that brought us to life. The feelings we felt there, the experience during birth and the early years where we may not have been verbal, but were absolutely capable of feeling emotions hold the key to our perceptions. If our early years presented us with trauma, it can become our self talk for a long time. Something as small as your mother leaving you to go and see her sick father for a week can be traumtic for a child at any age. The child isn’t capable of understanding that there may have been logistical issues. He / she may not be able to comprehend the mother’s side of the story. However, this separation may go unnoticed and become the inner voice of that child. As an adult, this person may now be prone to feeling abandoned. Although, people may not be leaving or abandoning him/her. Hence, it is crucial to understand what has shaped our perceptions. Awareness is the first step to understanding what do we feel and why. Each one of us is unique and feels differently about every incident. No two persons react to the same situation in an identical way.

So coming back to feeling abandoned or isolated. It is a great time to focus on understanding yourself better. Going deeper to learn what triggers these feelings. The best part is, we end up blaming our parents, friends and everyone around for any trauma we me have suffered. Truth is, as adults, we have the power to take responsibility of our own happiness and claim our freedom from everything and everyone external.

The answer lies in self-love. When we are able to understand that by choosing ourselves before anyone else in the whole world, we are loving ourselves, expectations from others naturally decreases. But self love does not mean solo trips, foot massages or shopping sprees alone. At a deeper level, it means choosing to love yourself, being kind to your soul and to support yourself no matter what. Because ultimately we are on a journey of our own. People join us for different spans of time. We are the greatest witnesses to our journey and we are also our greatest cheerleaders.

P.S. The next time you feel rejected, left alone or lonely, remind yourself who’s on your team – YOU. And that is what matters most. Understanding that no one in the world has the time to plan to make you sad can free you from plenty of anger that is doing more harm to your body than anybody else. Decode your perceptions and ffigure out what has caused them. Work on letting go those feelings and therefore perceptions that are doing you no good.