Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Discovering Our Discovering Our

RealitiesRealities

Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Discovering Our Discovering Our

RealitiesRealities

By Maribel LozadaBy Maribel Lozada

• Reality is everything that exists, whether or not it is observable, accessible or understandable by science, philosophy, theology, or any other system of analysis.

• “Reality” is created in the mind.• Reality is not what is “real,” it’s what we think

is real. • The clash of two people’s realities about the

same subject/situation crates a conflict.

Perception We create our

realities of people, events and things in our environment using our perception.

Through the method of perception, we create our environment, which becomes our reality.

• First, we take these environmental messages.• Second, we select certain ones. • Third, we attach meanings to them. • Fourth, we create a picture of our environment called “reality”

Stages of Perception• We select data from the environment.• We organize and prioritize that data so

that certain information stands out over other information.

• We manipulate that data to give meaning to the information that has been selected and sorted.

Selecting and Sorting Filters

• Your psychological condition affects the way you recognize incoming data. It has to do with your state of mind in that precise moment.

• Your physical condition affect the data you recognize. It has to do with the senses, age, health, fatigue, hunger, and biological cycles.

• Your language allows you to understand messages from your environment. The more limited your vocabulary, the more limited your reality.

What factors influence how we interpret data? • Closure is when you try to make

sense out of what you are observing. • Selective perception is when you use

only as many cognitions as are necessary to judge persons, events, and things in your life.

• Patterning is keeping new or current perceptions in line with past ones.

Reality Testing• It is a tool used by mediators

to test what you see in your personal interpretations of events.

• A critical thinker needs to keep an open mind and be willing to alter his/her impressions as events prove those impressions to be mistaken.

• Listening skills: Empathic listening is

understanding the positions of others.

Deliberative listening is the attempt to hear information, analyze it, draw conclusions from it, and recall it at a later time.

StasisStasis is the existence state

of things, living things as they are without modification.

Example: Do you remember when you broke up with that special someone? Your stasis was to think of that person as someone special and important.