Perspective

Is the Glass ½ Full or ½ Empty? It depends!

Perspective: to think about a situation or problem in a wise and reasonable way: hmm

There are many things I continue to learn as I wander through this life. Perspective is one of those things. How we look at something or how we perceive it – has everything to do with our outlook on life and living. It embodies our understanding of life and how we continue to move through it.

Our perspective depends on many things including our life experiences, values, beliefs, and information we take in from sources we listen to.

When we are in the middle of something chaotic or traumatic, it is very difficult for us to gain a bigger perspective on the matter. Once our emotions get involved – especially if we feel threatened – we get ‘emotionally hijacked’ and we physiologically lose our ability for common sense. The threat doesn’t even have to be real – we can just think we are in danger. Our survival instincts kick in and we lose logical thinking ability. This is scientifically proven.

It’s usually why we can’t see the forest for the trees. We don’t have the capacity to ‘step back’, pause, breathe, feel what resonates and then make a conscious choice. We tend to be on ‘auto pilot’ and react in knee-jerk fashion to life, the situation, and other people. We are robbed of the ability to simply respond.

To gain perspective – to gain a wider lens to see through, we need to stay in open-hearted awareness and keep an open mind to things we don’t agree with, or things we haven’t heard before. A good friend of mine once said to me, “We don’t know what we don’t know”. So, to be fully engaged and maintain a broad outlook on life & living, we need to be able to access a greater depth of understanding, resilience, and information.

Getting to know our ‘triggers’ – getting to know ourselves intimately – to understand what closes us down to new or different ideas, is paramount in our ability to step back and see a bigger picture. To slow down & resist the urge to ‘punch back’ or react in blind defence of anything – we need to understand ourselves and our limiting beliefs better. If we don’t, we allow ourselves to be emotionally hijacked and lose an opportunity to grow, to learn, to heal or to shift something that limits us in life.

This is why it is so important to learn in life. To stay in wide-eyed wonder as we grow even when we disagree, we can learn.