We live in a strange world. In our daily lives we see a lot, hear a lot and learn a lot. They shape up our beliefs and perceptions.
Many of those beliefs and perceptions are stupid and limit our vision.
We are trained amazingly to think like everyone else and behave like everyone else.
If someone out of us thinks little differently, he becomes the foolish one. I can cite many examples from Alexander Graham Bell to Henry Ford. They were considered crazy when they were dreaming at that time.
In this age, we are accustomed to innovations and we do not call them crazy who we think are “capable”. But, what if a kid who we think has no talent tells us about his “unrealistic” dreams. Isn’t he a fool?
Alright, where am I going with this you ask? With my posts on this topic "Breaking Myth" I will analyse some great myths which are part of our daily lives. We pass these myths to every other person we meet (depends on the situation). We repeat them in our mind and hear them too often. This leads us to believe in them so strongly that anyone who challenges those beliefs is an outcast. We lose on many opportunities because we can't see further.
Like Law of Conservation of Energy, myths also have some principles
• Myths can be easily created but hardly destroyed
• They can be passed from one generation to other
That’s it. The last one if I propose myths are constant would be wrong because some jerk keeps promoting new ones.
Let me pick the first one which I hate the most. “First impression is Last impression”
Humans are judgmental. We form “opinions” without careful analysis. Our first impression is actually our judgement. And many a times it is wrong.
In his book “Positive Intelligence” Shirzad Chamine covers a great deal about judgmental attitude of our brain which prevents us from understanding and analyzing real facts.
In his book “Think and Grow Rich” Napoleon Hill shares a story of Guglielmo Marconi. He was taken into custody and examined in a psychopathic hospital by his “friends”. His fault was that he announced about a principle he discovered. Through this principle he could send messages through air, without any wires or other direct physical means of communication. He was the inventor of radio.
Do you know any person who was rejected by many organizations only to be a top performer in the current organization? I know quite a few. Would you disagree that current system of recruitment is not up to the mark? I have had my share of interviews. The HR makes up their mind in first few minutes. Their first impression leaves them blind.
How about sales? We are told time and again in sales that “First impression is last impression.” It is drilled in our head. It is true that we need to be presentable to make a first impression and all that. But when a client says “NO!” isn’t it a fact that most sales people leave the client just because they judge by their “experience” that client would not take the product or service.
The training about first impression backfires because salesperson starts taking first impression about a client to be true and starts becoming judgmental affecting his performance. Call it hunch or first impression.
Let’s discuss about social world. How many times has that happened that with our first impression we make an opinion about a person? Later after spending some time we realize the person is not the same.
Most of the problems we face in our life give their first impression as: being difficult, only to realize later that it was an opportunity in disguise.
I am not against us making first impression. We are not a sage to control our mind. But our mind needs to be trained in such a way that we should not jump to conclusions after that first impression. We should seek for more facts to analyse. We should keep an open mind.
That ideally should be an important part of education system. To let students be rational and open minded. Sadly, the education system has limited scope to make that happen. We all say that we should think differently but hardly few of us do that.
I can go on but I hope I was able to present my view.
First Impression is "First" Impression. Period!
P.S. - I would welcome feedback in comments.