The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

We can think of the way we react to our universe as the way that we managereality. There are so many things happening around us all the time that we canonly focus on a few of them. By choosing which we will focus on, we are already"managing" our reality. We are sculpting the type of reality that we will haveinside of our minds.An example: At our workplace, we may find coworkers who greet us withgenuine warmth, with a smile, and a caring word. We may also findcoworkers who ignore us when passing us in the hallway, or, worse, whoactually show disdain by their facial expression or tone of voice. As we passthese individuals, we can choose to allow our thoughts and feelings to dwellon one or the other. If we focus on the one who is warm and caring, ourimage of our workplace will be more heavily weighted with warmth andcaring. If we focus on the one who pulls for feelings of worthlessness, ourimage of our workplace will be more heavily weighted with contempt andindifference. The workplace is objectively the same. But our experience ofits reality is markedly different. It is by focusing on different aspects of theobjective reality that we sculpt our subjective reality.Managing reality is not merely an exercise in positive thinking. The way inwhich we sculpt our internal perception of our world has a measurable influence onhow we will shape our objective reality. The image of the world that we holdinside ourselves leads to a desire to protect and improve it or to neglect it andeventually abandon it.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 14