What The 2% Of People Have That The 98% Is Missing

One skill creates a massive difference

“What all people feel becomes their point of view of what reality is. If you can learn to manipulate the way people feel, you can make them feel any way you want them to feel.” — Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA spy

The CIA found that 98% of people are trapped in their own perception. So the 2% that live in perspective (or learn to develop it) can manipulate everybody’s perception (politicians, entrepreneurs, salesmen, spies).

The key difference between the two concepts is empathy. Former FBI negotiator Chris Voss called this skill tactical empathy — understanding and intentionally using the skill of empathy to become aware of and manage another’s perspective.

Perception vs perspective

Humans are like fish in the water. We have our frame of reference but rarely see it. We think that how we perceive the world is how it operates. Perception is about us and how we interpret the world around us.

But it’s limited by the 5 senses and tied to our biases. It’s your default position because that doesn’t take any effort. Therefore, your perception is predictable to anyone who knows you well enough.

Perspective, on the other hand, gives you the ability to perceive yourself and others from the outside in, meaning you can view the world as it is not as your perception tells you it is — to think outside the box.

The good news is that it’s a skill that can be trained. Another good news is that most people won’t go against the grain, so you’ll be able to stand out from the crowd.

The problem with perception

Living in your own movie — perception — makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. We had to be self-centred to make sure we survived. Our brain is still stuck in the days of the savannah, so it only cares about the Self.

But this way of seeing creates judgment.

When you do something ‘wrong’, you find ways to explain it. You know what your reasoning is because you have access to your thought process.

But when you evaluate the behaviour of others, you don’t have access to their reasoning, only the result. So the tendency is to be much harsher if their outcome is not what we deem correct.

It’s a vicious cycle. We’re trapped in our own perception and when we see the world/others operate in a way that doesn’t match our perception, we believe it’s wrong.

The ability to see how the world works outside of your perception + have empathy for someone else’s perception is = perspective. I’d call this adulthood.

How to understand someone’s perception

Childhood, sociocultural context, and familial relationships are what shape perception. CIA’s psychologists found that by the age of 25, people are fully set in their worldview.

They distinguished 3 developmental stages of the brain:

1. Birth to 7 years old — we’re sponges, nothing is true or untrue so we get predisposed to believe a lot of things.
2. Between 7 and 13, we start to differentiate true vs untrue but it’s affected by the unconscious beliefs we learned in the 1st stage.
3. Ages 13–25 — we develop the ability to evaluate and reject certain pieces of information. We’re still biased but we can actively seek contradicting information.

When the CIA agent wants to ‘befriend’ a target, they look at the first 25 years of their life. This helps them to understand the target’s perception.

This is a helpful self-reflection tool:

Where/how/with whom did you spend every stage of your cognitive development and what ideas has that created for you?

Our beliefs are still malleable after the age of 25, but the worldview has been set. The only way to change that worldview is to actively seek ideas that challenge us.

However, the CIA can consistently befriend unsuspecting targets because most people don’t seek ideas that oppose their worldview.

Core motivators

Another thing the CIA evaluates to better understand someone’s perception is core motivators. Their core motivators are always based on the 3 childhood stages outlined above.

There are only 4 main core motivators in every decision human beings make:

• Rewards (money, accolades, social status, non-selfish reasons etc.)
• Ideology (wanting to see the world working in the ‘right’ (their own) way)
• Coercion (the individual is not acting on their free will but is being forced by the outside forces)
• Ego (don’t think this one needs explanation?)

Before the rise of psychology in the late 19th century, human behaviour was explained by moral and religious beliefs. They were usually black-and-white, good vs. evil worldviews.

But this still persists today. Even though research has demonstrated the complexity of an individual’s motivations and behaviour, we still evaluate others through the black-and-white lens precisely because we don’t have the skill of tactical empathy.

Human behaviour — just like the world — is infinitely complex. Everyone has their unique experience, childhood, beliefs, conscious and unconscious biases that manifest in their behaviour and choices.

Actively applying this mindset will make you a better human. A more influential human too.

How to develop perspective

Stop thinking about yourself.

We all live in our own heads — we’re the star of our own movie and the centre of every story. This is true about yourself and the person you’re trying to understand.

An exercise to begin developing tactical empathy is considering what life is like through the other person’s POV:

• What does their day look like?
• What do they do for a living and why?
• What are their social interactions like?
• What do they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and why?
• What podcasts, articles, books do they like to read?

A bit similar to how marketers think of their target audience.

When you take some time to reflect from a different perspective, you gain an informational advantage that turns into a tangible, unfair advantage.

You understand people better, what they care about and their decision-making process. This can be used in business, leadership, relationships.

• Instead of thinking about what it’s like being married to your spouse, consider what it’s like being married to you.
• What is it like being your friend/neighbour/coworker?
• When you see someone you disagree with, consider what life experience that person has had to arrive at this conclusion.

You will start seeing results immediately.

It’s human instinct to think of yourself first

Nothing’s wrong with having a perception. Everyone does, even the people who developed the skill of tactical empathy.

It’s the refusal to see reality for what it is over our own views that gets us into trouble.

Anyone who can anticipate the needs of the other person (aka has perspective) will be well-liked. Anyone who can’t see outside of their perception will be a difficult person to deal with.

Remember:

• How you see the world and other people is not what they’re actually like.
• Perception is distorted by the 5 senses and unconscious biases we develop during the first 25 years of life.
• Becoming a better partner, friend, employee, business owner and human requires pausing your perception and stepping into perspective.

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