Your first impression is based on your beliefs and past experience.
If you believe a rose is a wonderful thing, all roses in the world are beautiful. By default. They may vary from interesting to amazing, yet they are all beautiful.
If a spider is generally to be feared, if your past experience with spiders proved rewarding, emotionally pleasant, all spiders in the world relate to having a nice experience. By default.
If you prefer some trends – like in fashion, literature, eating even – you will find them all rewarding and they are your first choice always. After all, they are your preferences.
While some things are very clear to be placed in one category or another – you like or don’t like – some others are not so obvious.
The latter is due to the things that impacted you emotionally, and your desire (preference) to belong to a certain group – defined by certain “values” – will not allow you to clear up your own preference, especially if it strongly differs from the group’s “value”.
So, even if you don’t consciously know, and you cannot explain why, your first impression is always right. It defines “reality”- things you see, feel, touch – according to your inner filters, your inner beliefs and past experiences. It will not be right for other people, whose beliefs and past experiences are different, and it will not change until and unless your inner beliefs change.
When your personal first impression of someone or something differs strongly from other peoples’, your opportunity to find out what your beliefs are has arrived. You may challenge them, if you consider, or you may consciously now own them. On the contrary, trying to convince the other people, or, even worse, trying to convince yourself out of your first impression, will lead to unfruitful frustration and the inevitable conclusion “the first impression is always right”.
(Past experiences will not change, your beliefs and perspective to what has happened yet may change. Your conscious effort of discovering your own filters – your preferences – will change your perspective on things. It may be in the sense of discovering your own, personal, inherent and true-to-yourself beliefs, and accepting them regardless of what your used-to-be groups’ values are, or in the sense of taking over new groups’ beliefs and points of view.)
