How naming and labelling affects our perception

The moment we name something, we stop seeing it as it is, and we start looking at it through the lens of its given name. 

When we call an experience a failure, it stops being a stepping stone towards our goal and it becomes an incident to be avoided. 

The experience itself hasn't changed, but the name we give it determines whether we see it as a positive or negative happening.

Through a simple name we can see beauty or crudeness, a welcoming smile or a threatening growl. 

Language isn't just a tool that we use to describe reality, it creates the environment through which we experience it. 

Calling someone a "liar" or a "charmer" makes us decide how to categorize and react to them. 

When we see an object, a person or a behaviour, the name comes to us first, then our perception follows.

We never ask ourselves whether the "label" fits or it is just distorts our sense of reality.
This also applies to our emotion and feelings.

When we call ourselves "anxious", every passing state of nervousness becomes a symptom of our anxiety. 

The name gives permanence and fixity to people, events, emotions and objects.

These labels become self-fulfilling prophecies and we start acting out the role they demand. 

These labels become more real than the person, feeling, event or inanimate object they refer to.

Our perception shifts when we start changing labels, or when we do away with them entirely. 

The "problematic employee", for example, becomes a valuable asset when we label him as "unconventional thinker." 

Refusing to name things could be a liberating exercise. 

The uncomfortable sensation that makes us tense doesn't need to be called anxiety, it is just a temporary emotion moving through our body. 

The person who wronged us is not our enemy, he is just another human being acting from a place of confusion, sadness or extreme fatigue. 

We experience reality directly rather than through the distorting filter of language when we refrain from labelling elements in our environment. 

Life becomes more enjoyable when it is not encumbered by the rigid categories we impose on it through our obsession with names and labels.