Perspective vs. Perception: Embracing Diverse Points of View

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:19] So why is it important?

 

Brian Persson: [00:01:22] I would assert that most everyone has a fairly narrow perception of the world, so imagine only understanding what you perceive. It would be very difficult to connect with a wide variety of people, because the large majority of people would not have your same perception. You guys would miss each other. I would also assert that this is why people feel most conversations are shallow, as they’re only connecting on where their perceptions match. This makes perspective critical. To be able to change your perspective so you can view things from other angles allows you to get into another’s world.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:59] Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. I do a lot of networking as I’m a part of many different women’s groups, and in the groups there are a lot of people come and they’re there because they want business, which that’s kind of the point of networking, is to meet people and eventually grow your business. But there are people who show up and I think just expect to get business on the first day they show up. And so when, you know, I talk to them and they’ll tell me everything about what they do and I’m sitting there going, okay, but you never asked me what I do. You haven’t made it relatable to me. And I get it. I mean, back in the day, I’m sure I was probably similar, but a new style of how I like to network is where I’m going there not for business, if I get it, fantastic. But I’m going there to help serve other people, help them, and it’s not even necessarily about their business. Like I’ll go to a networking group and I’ll meet some lovely ladies who I may not do business with, or maybe not at this time, but I may be able to help them if they’re looking for a babysitter or a certain support with one of their kids for their teams. So it’s about how I can help others as opposed to how can I get business, which is very shallow.

 

Brian Persson: [00:03:07] Yeah, yeah, there’s always a way to get into somebody else’s world and understand how to help them out. And through doing that, you can really get some powerful sales and powerful networking happening around you. It was two years ago, I think, from now that I landed a fairly large client and, how I did so was just getting into their world. I asked a lot of questions. I got into the organization. I figured out, like, what problems they were trying to solve, how I could get in there and help them out and just really, like, see behind their eyeballs and see what they’re seeing. And after I was sitting down one night and I realized I hadn’t given them a lick of technical background on me. And it was a website client. So you’d think that a website, you know, someone looking for a website would want to actually know that you can do websites. And they knew nothing about my technical background, but they knew because I got into their world and I got their perspective that they could trust me because I understood them.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:19] Yes, absolutely. So our first takeaway is that failure is only a matter of perspective. The concept of failure is subjective and hinges on one’s perspective.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:31] Yep, a lot of people view failure as a bad thing.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:34] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:35] And a lot of successful people view failure as actually a pretty good thing.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:41] Yeah. Especially because if you look at it from what did I learn from this failure, you’re always growing.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:47] So even from just that kind of 10,000 foot view of what, how you should view failure, it’s really obvious that from us, especially with, you know, the number of different successful people we’ve met, you got to take failure on and you got to switch that perspective. You can’t perceive failure as this thing that’s trying to kick you down and and keep you, keep you beat up.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:12] Yeah. And like you say when you look at it just from your point of view, it can be very negative. And so if I take, you know, being a mom, for example, a career mom, if you will, I remember feeling like I was a failure as a mom.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:28] Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:28] Because there were some events my kids were at that I couldn’t make at school or because I was working or I had my kids in, well, we had our kids in day home because we were both working, and I just felt like a failure. And then when I started meeting other moms who were experiencing similar things, but now I was seeing it from a little bit of a different perspective because it wasn’t just my world, it was their world. And then it got flipped on me to be like, okay, what are you giving your kids, right? Like providing for them? And do you still do things with them? And you show them love and you take them out and you take, of course I do all those things. But until I kind of step beside myself to look at the whole picture, I was very hard on myself.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:09] Yeah, you had to get out from in behind your own eyeballs and really look at your own world from a different perspective. I don’t know if you remember when I think our first son was maybe nine months old, you were having regular normal like mum problems with a nine month old, you know. I don’t know what to do and I’m still figuring this all out and all those issues that are happening. And you had a friend who was a nurse come over for the day and I went to – I was still working in my previous job – so I went out for the day to the office, and I knew this nurse was coming over and I got home and I was like, really anxious about how, like, what kind of an environment am I walking into here? And I said, how did it go? And the nurse was like, it was great. Like, you have a great baby. And like, there’s like all these fun things going on and you’re like, it was horrible. And like, this was a bad day. And right there you could see the difference in perspectives between the nurse who thought our son was amazing, and you, who were just way too embroiled in the situation and couldn’t get out of it and see it from a different angle.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:07:24] Well, yeah, I mean, I think any new mom can relate. When you have your first one, you have no idea what to expect. So of course they cry a lot and when they cry, you don’t know if they’re hungry, if their diaper needs to be changed, if they need a nap, if they need to play. You try all those things and they’re still crying, like it takes a toll on you if you don’t know that world. And my girlfriend, who actually is a neonatal nurse, sees babies day in, day out, all the time. So she’s, you know, has so much experience with babies. And so when she came over and she was like, oh, he’s great, I’m going, okay.

 

Brian Persson: [00:07:56] Yeah, I tried to play that out for a long time after that.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:00] You sure did.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:01] It’s like but the nurse said he’s a good baby.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:06] And then when the second one comes around, I mean, I knew what to expect, if you will. Right? I kind of had a different mentality going in because I had different perspectives and learned from other people and other moms. So yeah, it was definitely out of my eye view only of what I knew versus what the rest of the world knew.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:25] Yeah, while we had our second son, you had a lot more different angles that you had looked at over those two years and could see a lot of things from different perspectives. Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:36] So another one, I think, that is a really good example of what we may have deemed failure or many would see as failure, is in a real estate portfolio. As you know, we started back in 2009 and we’ve bought a mix of real estate from single family homes, condos to duplex, suited homes. And just to kind of figure out what works for us and what didn’t. And when we started selling a couple of our pieces that really didn’t fit the model we wanted for our portfolio, many probably would have viewed when we sold one of our condos, which we bought for 117,000 back in, I think, 2009.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:15] Dirty cheap.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:15] Yeah, yeah. Well, we thought it was very cheap. And then we turned around and sold it during the pandemic for like, I think 85,000.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:22] Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:23] And that would look like extreme failure and a loss. But when you look at the whole perspective of it, it was not.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:31] No. Over the lifetime of that project, we actually made 6% not, not per annum or anything like that, just a solid 6% across all those years.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:43] But it was our first purchase together and it was a huge learning opportunity for us. I mean, that’s where we learned how to have tenants and how to have proper agreements with our tenants and what kind of issues might come up with tenants or condo boards or zoning. So, that, if you had to pay for that education, how much would that have cost?

 

Brian Persson: [00:10:03] Oh, lots. Lots. I mean, we’re talking about nine years of education, basically. But if you looked at it the other way as well, you know, it wasn’t a failure. We, a lot of real estate investors may look at that as a failure, but it’s only a failure compared to how much more that same amount of investment could have done over those nine years. So this is a fantastic reason why anybody getting into real estate needs a coach. Because if we had had a coach, if we had been air quotes “smart” back then, then we probably would have been a lot farther ahead on our real estate journey. I would, I think I worked it out one day, and I figured that if we had hired a coach back in 2009, we probably would be almost – what would it be – three quarters of a million up on our wealth.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:57] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:10:57] Just based on all the investments that we’ve made, that have all made money. But compared to the way that our real estate investments perform today, if we had done it back then, we would be significantly farther ahead.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:12] Yes.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:13] Right? So it’s kind of the failure or perspective of that failure is not really so much in that it was a loss. It was more just it could have been better. And so we’re, and we decided to not beat ourselves up about it. And instead look back and go, hey, these are all the things that we gained. And here’s all the reasons why this was a good investment.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:38] Yeah, 100%. So when it comes to failure, look at what positive things you gained from that failure. Our next takeaway is perspective is a powerful tool. If you can see and understand things from another’s perspective, that will help you connect with them and allow you to find different angles to work with them or accomplish what you need.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:59] Yeah, it’s really just about getting into somebody else’s head, is really what what this is about. I, as I said earlier in the episode, that sales story, you can make a lot of sales, you can make a lot of friends, you can make a lot of good networks and connections by just getting into other people’s heads. And that’s just using perspective as that tool.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:25] Absolutely. And I mean, sales is of course a great example, but I mean, I got a list of examples where I’ve helped friends, girlfriends, probably more specifically see things from a different perspective, because maybe I’ve experienced it or gone through it so I could understand the pain they were going through or the discomfort, and I could bring them a different way of looking at it, because I had already been through it.

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:49] Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. One thing that stands out fairly well for me is a real estate friend of ours, but what was happening was we were in some kind of discussion and I invited him out to a particular event, and he seemed kind of confused by it, and I was, you know, using my perspective lenses. And I was coming around to his side of the, to his world. And I immediately realized that he didn’t think that we were friends as much as I thought we were friends. And I asked him, I’m like, do you, you know, do you believe that we are friends? And he’s like, well, you know, I don’t think we’re there yet. I’m like, so you have a particular number of times we have to meet and a particular number of beers we have to have in order for us to be friends. He’s like, well, yeah. I’m like, okay, well, just so you know, I 100% think you are my friend. And from that moment on, all of a sudden his perspective shifted and he realized that connections can be made quite a bit faster than if you sort of have like these preconceived notions, like your perception is locked onto like what something should be, i.e. his perception was you can’t be friends with somebody unless you meet all these criteria.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:19] Yeah. No, that’s a great example of someone just kind of opening up their eyes. I know one of my girlfriends, she was working for a sizable company, and she was up there on the chain, and she was just having issues with a colleague. He was harassing her and she didn’t really know what to do about it. And she just, I think, in some ways felt obligated to stay there or the perks maybe outweighed that. And then if she stayed, say, five years, she would get different benefits out of the whole company. And I just kind of looked at her and I said, firstly, like, it’s not okay ever to have anyone harass you. I said, there’s no amount of money or time that is going to make that okay. And I remember she took that away and the next time we met, probably about a month later, she’s like, you know, I really thought about what you said. She goes, and you’re right, I’m going to leave the company and I’m going to start my own company. And sure enough, she did. And I supported her through that as well, giving her ideas as she launched it. And she is so successful, she just, ten times what she ever thought she could make in her first year alone. And she’s so much happier and she doesn’t have to deal with being harassed. And it was just a matter of showing her a different perspective of the situation she was presenting.

 

Brian Persson: [00:15:37] Mhm. That’s where perspective becomes a sort of, that’s the second use of it as a powerful tool. And not only just helping others see a different perspective, but when you yourself are stuck in that fog and your perception, like your view of that of the world, just can’t see what you need to do and see the, you know, the path that you need to take, you got to change your perspective. And one of the most powerful ways you can do that is go and find somebody to help you change that perspective. Find somebody who has maybe done it. Find somebody you’ve trusted, ask them questions and be open to maybe a different point of view. And then all of a sudden, your point of view, your perception is getting added to by other people’s perspectives. And now the fog that you, you know, were in and couldn’t get through starts to clear.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:30] Yeah, absolutely.

 

Brian Persson: [00:16:32] We’ve told the story before, I think, on the podcast, but we have good friends who were talking about the dishwasher one time. One time they were over at our house. One of them, the guy, was loading the dishwasher, and then they were gently bugging each other about how he can’t load the dishwasher to save his life.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:50] Yeah.

 

Brian Persson: [00:16:51] Yeah. And, I gave, at that moment, I gave the lady another perspective on, you know, if you could come home and the dishes were clean and you didn’t know how they got there, would that be okay? And she’d be like, and she said, yeah, that would be great. I’m like, okay, well just let the dishes come home and be clean, right? Like, let him do the dishes. So her perspective changed on how the dishes needed to be done. And it was now that the result of the dishes was more important as compared to like the path those dishes took to get clean.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:26] Yeah, I find I think many people, myself included, we do have a path, quote unquote, that we think is the right way and we don’t stop and take time to think of, oh, well, if I did this a different way or was open to another suggestion, could it be done sooner or faster, you know, more cost effective, whatever it may be? I mean, we’ve grown since then, I think, now to just reach out and ask for support, regardless of what it is, even like something as simple as laundry, which we’ve talked about many times. Right? Have the boys fold the laundry, which saves me time. But at first I was not against it, but I was against the fact that they just folded it quite differently than how I do. And it took me some time to realize, does it really matter? No.

 

Brian Persson: [00:18:06] No. It’s tough, though, still to ask because sometimes you don’t even know. Sometimes you don’t even know that you need another perspective. And you’re just sitting there stuck. And you know, as humans, I think we very often try to be a tribe of one and try and solve it ourselves. And it’s just, it’s almost habitual that humans do that. But if you do know you’re stuck and you can kind of get, you know, oomph up enough energy to go out there and ask somebody, then do it because your whole world could change by just doing that.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:18:41] Yeah. Any kind of issues that you have in life at all? Speak to a friend. Like, I know some simple things, I go out with a lot of different girlfriends over time, but one of my girlfriends came to me and she’s like, I put on like 30 pounds in four months. She goes, and I didn’t change anything. I didn’t change what I wore, how I work out, I didn’t change my diet. And you could tell she was just so upset by it. And it wasn’t typical of her, and she didn’t know what to do with it. But that’s when I was like, okay, have you tested with your doctor that you could be entering perimenopause? Because she was getting, she was, I think early 40s, and it was just a oh, I never thought of that. Right? It just, speaking it out loud someone probably has some way to help support you.

 

Brian Persson: [00:19:23] Yeah.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:19:24] Yeah. So, steps to get there. Be curious and don’t guess. Guessing is your perception. Without communication, you never know the other side. Our next takeaway is that growth requires different perspectives. Growth and progress necessitates transforming perspectives into perceptions. And remember, perspectives are not permanent.

 

Brian Persson: [00:19:51] Yeah. Some of the things that we talked about in this podcast already really hit this home. You know, you got to get out there. You got to talk to somebody else. You got to find new perspectives to really add to your personal perception of the world and make your world a bigger, brighter place. Because otherwise you’re just going to be sitting there staring through the same lenses for your whole life and probably not a lot of growth is going to happen.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:21] For sure. I know one of the big growth we had is, of course, with our real estate. You, you know, you thought it was risky investment. And while we did do some, at one point you capped out and I was like, no, you know, as we share the story a lot, I signed you up for a course or another networking event for our real estate investment. And that changed your whole perspective on real estate.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:46] Oh, big time. That night that you, the very first event that I went to, I remember I met a guy who just casually said, oh, you know what, I’m on track to have $25,000 passive income per month in a little bit less than ten years. And I was like, what? You can, that’s a thing in real estate? You can do that? And I met so many different people, even just in that single night like that, that I came home like super stoked. And I, and I think it was about 1130, maybe even closer to midnight, and you’re an early to bedder. And I shook you and I’m like, do you know where I was? Like, do you know who I met? And you’re like, shut up, go to sleep.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:26] Yes, you can tell me in the morning. But, you know, that’s a great example. I knew what real, I had a different perspective on real estate than you did. But as your partner, and at that time, I didn’t have a way to explain it to you to get you to understand. So I just went and signed you up for something. And so just, I guess, I say keep an open mind with what your partner is suggesting or offering, because remember, they can see things that you may not see yourself. Or of course, they’re privy to different information based on what they do in life and where they are. And don’t hesitate to offer other suggestions or options to your partner as well, so they can get a different perspective to understand maybe where you’re coming from, in case, you know, they’re not listening to you or don’t understand your world.

 

Brian Persson: [00:22:14] Super important. It’s actually so important that it’s part of our workshop. We actually have exercises inside of our workshop that make the participants go through people and find out who they can add into their life and into their relationship to help them out, to give them different perspectives. Because as partners or, you know, whether you’re married or just, you know, common law, whatever situation you have, too often you go about it on your own and you think that your partner is the sole source of support for you. And the reality is that your partner is one of the major sources of support, but they’re not the sole source of support, and they won’t always have the support that you need at any given time. And they might not ever have the support you need. So you got to have, you got to add people into your relationship and not go it alone and have those different perspectives come in so that you’re not sitting there stuck not knowing what that relationship can never know.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:18] Yeah. I know another great example, I think, of that was around money. Right, we share our different upbringings on money. And while I had the scarcity mentality, a poverty mentality if you will, I just thought, you know, you had to work really hard to make money and you had to save everything for that rainy day. And while you didn’t have the same perspective and you probably shared that with me, and I obviously wasn’t open to listening at the time. But then we went and took a course together on money, and that’s where I learned, like, wait a minute. No, that was just my upbringing and how I was raised. And it was one way of looking at money, but I had the choice to change that if I wanted. And of course I did. And I changed it to the abundance mentality. And then our wealth just grew and grew from that as well. So it was a matter of, you probably told me, I’m sure, different perspectives of money, but I wasn’t either willing to listen or maybe I wasn’t open to listening. But when we went to a third party, because it was a course, then I was able to listen and come back – I mean, we did it together – but come back together and be like, okay, now I understand your perspective on money because you had a different way of looking at it.

 

Brian Persson: [00:24:33] That happens a lot in relationships. You can tell your partner till you’re blue in the face and they won’t listen to you sometimes.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:40] It’s true.

 

Brian Persson: [00:24:41] And then three months later they come back and they say, did you know? And they spout back the exact same information that you’ve been telling them for the last number of years? But the reality is that sometimes it’s just not, it’s just not understandable. Or they don’t get it from that perspective. And they just need to maybe hear it from multiple sources until it clicks. And we’ve had that experience and we see it a lot in other relationships. And that’s part of what we aim to do is to unlock that so that people can bring other perspectives into their relationship and get that engine moving and going a little bit faster.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:25:18] Yeah, that’s a great tool to have with your partner. So steps to get there is make it a habit to ask questions and aim to see things from another perspective. Decide what works for your life and make it your perception. So to recap the takeaways. The first one is failure is only a matter of perspective. The second one, perspective is a powerful tool. And number three, growth requires different perspectives. Our topic for the next episode is going to be on resentment. Brian and I have learned to overcome resentment, which has helped improve many relationships, including ones with my families and my friends, as well as Brian’s family.

 

Brian Persson: [00:26:01] Big time. We release podcasts every two weeks. Be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app to journey with us and create your life by design.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:11] Thanks for listening to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts, Jessilyn and Brian.