“That Completely Changed My Thinking”: 40 Perception-Changing Stories By Our Community

When my best friend came out and I realized I wasn’t straight either and I was opened up to a whole new world of LGBTQ+ people.

When I realized that nothing really matters, like to the universe. This thought actually helped my depression and anxiety because it lifts some of the weight off my chest, that even if I mess something up, the universe will carry on just fine, it's not the end of the world if I do/say something wrong.

When God's booming voice from above told me to quit drinking & using drugs...OR ELSE!

Well, it was actually a judge, but he thought he was a god. 😁

I was in a cruel relationship for years. I didn't mind being the victim as much as it bothered me that he would mistreat our daughter. I'm normally a non-confrontational person and often had recurring nightmares of the mistreatment. I was being stalked, harrassed as i had come to expect from this recurring nightmare, and i kept waiting for someone to save me. These nightmares kept going even after i left the relationship. Then, one night, it occurred to me that nobody was coming to save me. I was on my own. I could either get used to being someone's domestic plaything, or i could stand up and save myself. So i did.
Five years later, i'm married to an amazing man, and the mistreatment is just a bad memory from long ago. My husband's friends regard me as a terrifying force of nature. All because i decided to be my own damn hero.

In my final year of high school, I (F) hung out with a girl. We did everything together but I mostly enjoyed the sleepovers. We lost touch after graduation. A few years later we are both back home visiting family and run into each other. She tells me she is recently engaged and brought her fiancé to meet her dad. A young woman approaches us and I get introduced - to her fiancée.

I am clearly surprised and asked her how long she had known. She said since she was 13. Does your dad know? Yep, since I first knew. Why did you not tell me? You know why. Indeed, I did. It was not something that was ever spoken - just a given. It was not right - period!

It was then that I realized any prejudices, racism, or anything else in that regard that I may have, was not of my own. I swore, that day, to rid myself of all the toxic garbage that my parents and family had passed onto me and, especially, to never pass it on to my future children.

Skip ahead 20 years and I am watching Lethal Weapon with my 15-year-old son. Mom, I can't remember that one actor's name. Which one? The guy with the mustache. I tell him, Danny Glover. And then I had a silent cry.

I never truly understood what real helplessness was until my infant daughter had an illness that she might never recover from. Thankfully everything is fine but I often think of that and it centers me on any life problems I might encounter to provide perspective.

When I found out my favorite dinosaur the Brontosaurus ("B" from now on) wasn't real. I still believed in Santa so this was my first big "lie". The guy who found/named it had cludged it together from several dinosaurs and made a fake skull to say he found the biggest one. Scientists realized the mistake several years later and fixed it but the guy who funded the "B" scientist was a publisher so he continued the lie. I wasn't heart broken when the guy at the museum told me. Instead it hooked me on science because he showed me why. Science is about finding better answers and its ok to correct things that are wrong. For the first time, dinosaurs became real because they weren't perfect. I became a scientist whose chased marmots up mountains and worked in organ banks because of that "lie". Happy ending - they found a "B" skull in 2015 that matched most of the other bones from the original "B" and 3 species are back. So a mistaken mistake was corrected. I love science.

That I have full control of my own happiness. No matter what anyone says, it is their opinion and I have my own as well. What I do that will make me happy, I chose that... whatever the consequences are, I take full responsibility for it.

Happiest I have ever been in the past 2 decades. I wish I knew this when I was younger! I chose my choices!

When I was about 11, I was talking with my best friend and I don't remember what I said, but it wasn't about Africa, but she misunderstood something and yelled, "I am not African!" and ran home crying. This is in the US and she was black and I was white. She rarely got mad and rarely yelled. She was a quiet, sweet person who would typically get hurt rather than mad.

I didn't understand all that stuff. (I thought I was black for 6 months when I was 7, because she was "black" and we were the same in my view.)

I realized when she went home crying that she had some ongoing, never-ending pain in her life that I didn't have in mine (and which nobody should have, let alone a little girl). I don't remember how I figured out exactly what this was all about not being African (probably my Mom explained).

She was two grades below me, so if people were saying mean, racist things to her in school, I didn't know. The kids in the neighborhood were fine as far as I know, but my other friend's mom was clearly prejudiced, possibly racist.

That is the day I lost my innocence and realized how incredibly unfair the world can be. And the saddest thing about that is that she had learned it years before :-(

Leaving all toxic people behind. 28 rn but have never been this happy before.

The time I started to read the Bible on my own - not relying on what others had told me about the Bible.....

The moment in my life that changed the way I think was being told I had stage 3c ovarian cancer. It actually changed a lot more than my way of thinking.

A few years earlier , I used to HATE K-pop and My friends who liked it. I am born in a Homophobic Family and always saw the world from their eyes. But as Now I grew up a bit , I realized How racist I am becoming !! I hated them because they have tiny eyes , and because K-pop guys wore makeup !! I was so embarrassed when I learned about Homophobic people , Because I was one and didn't knew !! Even tho I was just 11 , Im Still embarrassed that how stupid I was. If we should not judge a book by its cover , Why judge music by its language ? Why judge people by how they look ? WHY JUDGE PEOPLE ??

Got promoted to a leadership role. Shortly afterwards, of my closest coworkers get in a beef. I try to sort it out myself because one or both of them could have been fired over the incident. I deal with it before anyone else finds out, but neither one appreciates my help.

First one (same position as me) reports me for using the word "s**t" in our conversation (trust me - every second word out of his mouth was worse). I get hauled into the manager's office and a letter placed in my employee file for being "unprofessional". Not much I can do about it.

Second one (my subordinate) invites me to her place for a bbq where she gets stoned and tells me something disturbing about how she stalked an ex-coworker (that I was still friends with). Next day - coincidentally- the ex-coworker asks if I think she was crazy to think she was being stalked. I said no. It gets back to the stalker that I had the conversation with the ex-employee and said she wasn't crazy ... and I get hauled into the manager's office and suspended for two days for "breaching confidentiality" of my subordinate...... For talking to someone not employed by our company...... about something that had nothing to do with our business....... in the private residence of the subordinate..... who was high at the time.

This has changed the fundamental nature of who I am as a leader. It's everyone for themselves out there. There is no such thing as a work-friend.

I worked in a highly competitive sporting industry when I was a young adult. I enjoyed some association with the England squad and ended up being on 'standby' for an International junior tournament. Flash forward to me turning professional and being as green as they come, trusting everybody, thinking everyone would be my friend. Like a daft labrador, wagging my tail at people.

The situation was that we had the first team (that you would see on the TV) and the reserves (that people came to watch in the stadium). There were three of us battling for those two positions. Healthy competition, I thought. May the best man win.

Oh, how wrong I was. Everyone was friendly to your face but was just in it for themselves. I thought they were my friends but things got back to me that they had been saying behind my back. I was so disappointed in them that I was inconsolable. How can someone be so two-faced? The worst was yet to come.

As I caught up on my experience, I was a threat to the position of the other two guys. Exactly around that time, I was called into the manager's office where I was accused of having a gambling problem - I did not. A couple of weeks later the manager asks me whether I thought I would pass a drug test. Of course, I would. Then it was a drinking problem - nope. Somebody was spreading rumors.

Eventually, I realized that you can't trust anybody and it's not paranoia if they really are all out to get you.

When Russians, sorry Russian soldiers in unofficial disguise, invaded Ukraine's Crimea. Peaceful post-WW2 era and my youth ended right then even though I'm not Ukrainian myself...

"Be prepared to fail" - like things don't always work out perfectly. Some things just fail and that's normal. My perfectionist a** just took a new perspective.

The USMC and Iraq, I don’t recommend either.

I often go to church and pray (I’m Catholic) and ask God questions about life.

Once I asked Him, "If you are God, and you are almighty, and you let us deliberately struggle in life, and with all those problems we got, doesn’t it make you mean?" And I heard a voice, like coming directly from my heart, "Like a parent watches his kid learning how to walk, and even if it fails and tries again over and over," and "The real purpose is to never give up the process, and watching all of you doing so fills Me with immense love" (I don’t know how to express it accurately in English… it was very intense).

First of all, that kind of an answer would have never come out from my then actual state of mind (I was in a bad divorce from a narcissistic manipulative person) so that was definitely not me; and secondly, it totally opened my eyes: from that point on I just try very, very hard at everything without being obsessed with the outcome. It made me become a lot more positive and generous person, and professionally I even got multiple promotions since. Just wanted to share.

You know, life's not fair. Although I miss the mark on some days. Some days I get it right. After hearing Bobby Mcferrin's song "Don't worry be happy ", I realized it's all a state of mind and it changed the way I think about what it takes for me to be happy.