A first impression is not a person.

I spent some time today looking over previous posts that I have written here. It actually surprised me the number of completely different things that I have talked about over the past few months. My knowledge and experiences are rather eclectic, literally all over the place. Every day of my life is a new day full of value that I and other people can learn from.

And I am no different from anyone else in that regard. We all have unique valuable experiences that others can learn from even if we do not realize it. There is no way to know what or how much you can learn from any other person. But it is a fact that there is something valuable that you can learn from every person.

Yet it is said that the average woman will decide within the first two minutes of meeting a guy whether or not she wants to be with him. The average boss will decide based on first impression alone whether or not the person they are interviewing is a good fit for the job. Things like physical appearance, posture and facial expressions are often the sole tools used to make these decisions. This is completely unfair because the true value of a person is what is inside and there is no way of knowing that in such a short span of time.

We see a homeless person on the street and based on how dirty, dingy and ugly they look we decide that it is no wonder that they are homeless. Many homeless people are disabled vets with a great understanding of battlefield tactics and strategies, things which with just a little bit of tweaking can be effective and useful ideas for how to run a business better. Many others are people who were at one time skilled carpenters, auto mechanics, or metal workers. Others still are great scientific minds capable of solving difficult or dangerous problems that we need solutions to. But, we decide, and wrongly so, that, they have no value within our society.

We are being unfair to both ourselves and the other person when we just throw them away based solely on our first impressions. Do you like it when people shun you because of a bad first impression? Of course you don't. So why treat others that way.

Now I am not saying you should just ignore glaring warning signs that something is wrong with a person. But I am saying that if they are not an immediate threat to you, that you at least give them a chance to prove to you that your first impression is wrong. And even if your first impression is not wrong, even if what you do not like about them turns out to be true and valid maybe you could look past that to see the gems hiding within the trash.

Every adult, during their lifetime, has thousands of hours of experience, many of which could be positive life changing events for you, if you can manage to see past their flaws. Just  imagine how much better life could be for all of us if everyone actually learned from everyone else, instead of judging and avoiding one another as much as possible.