The boy is cute. The girl is stunning. This looks easy! We just met a great person. They have the perfect life. The problem is more sales! Just do this and things will be fine. The list can go on and on.
What takes a lifetime to learn is that appearances are just that — simply an appearance of what is. Appearance is not related to understanding. Not in any way. When we describe what we see it usually is filled with our biases and personal worldview of things.
But there is little factored into our description of what we see as to what we are not sure of and what is not evident to us in the first version of the story we tell. We never slow down to think about what we see. We spend time on embellishing our story of what we see so that we look interesting and smart to other people who will listen.
I have found that the loudest person is usually the most insecure and the introvert is much smarter & aware than we give them credit for. Many times what I thought was a cause of what was happening was simply another symptom of something much deeper and less apparent.
The stories we should be crafting about what we see should include a second version that is different than our first story. Only then can we force ourselves to slow down enough to realize that maybe our eyesight is faulty and our certainty about something is misguided.
Try telling yourself a second story the next time you rush to tell someone your first. In the long run, it just might make you look smarter and act more wisely. Then again, you will need some time to see which version plays out. And that will involve some patience which is hard for us to find during the excitement in our lives.