Perspective
- I am grateful for perspective.
- Your perspective is right. But so is theirs.
- You can change the world.
- Have a vision.
- Know your perspective will change over time.
If you understand that the way you see things is your perspective, and your perspective alone, that will help you tremendously in life.
The first and most important thing about perspective is understanding you have one.
The reality is our own experiences, both how they’ve impacted us physically and mentally, shape our perspective. Something that comes easy to us, hitting a ball with a stick, speaking another language, running great distances, whatever it is, helps us form opinions about ourselves and those around us. That thing may come easy to us, but be almost impossible for others.
If you think doing something is easy, and someone else finds that exact same thing tremendously difficult, who’s right?
In my opinion, you both are. That is one way you can have two valid perspectives about the same thing.
So the first key to your understanding of the world, and others in it, are knowing that your perspective is right, but so is theirs.
I often tell myself that if I was that person, with their experiences, their life lessons and beliefs, I would hold the same perspectives they do.
It’s hard to be that understanding, but necessary to truly understand the reality of where you are in the world.
The second perspective that is important is to understand that you can change the world.
Take a look around, wherever you are sitting, standing, or lying down. Everything you see that isn’t grown in nature was invented by someone no smarter than you. No different than you.
- That cell phone in your hand? Designed by a human.
- That chair you’re sitting in? Invented by a human.
- That home you’re in? Designed and built by someone just like you.
It’s easy to take the perspective that we can’t make a difference. That we don’t matter. That we are just a grain of sand in a dessert of possibilities. And that is true.
But what’s also true is a small change is all it takes to change your state of being, or the world around you.
One degree warmer turns ice into water. One different degree warmer turns water into steam.
The challenge is all the other degrees in between ice melting and becoming water, and water boiling and becoming steam, don’t seem to matter.
They don’t seem to make any difference, but they do.
Every degree of change is a little progress forward.
In your case you can think of it as progress towards a goal. And it’s that perspective of progress that makes all the difference.
If you know you’re headed in the right direction, you know you’re going the right way, and at the end of the path is where you want to go, then you are amazingly able to change the world.
The third perspective that is important to understand is your vision. Your vision of you. Your vision of your future. Your vision of the obstacles between here and there, and what you’re going to do about them.
If you have a compelling vision of your future, a vivid vision that enables you to see your future so clearly you can practically reach out an touch it, that perspective combined with the perspective of your current reality, enables you to understand exactly what you have to do to get from here to there.
If you want to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, you can clearly identify the path you have to take. There are hoops to be jumped through, tests to take and ace, and lessons you need to learn.
What a good perspective can do for you is when you face an obstacle, such as a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or failing a test, or not getting into your first choice of school, how does that change your perspective?
Do you give up on your dream because you had something go wrong? Or do you understand that nothing every goes perfectly, and you have to pick yourself up after you’ve been knocked down and continue on?
The perspective you take about the setback you face, will either help you accomplish all you want to accomplish, or it will knock you down and away and put you off track. So your perspective in that case is all that matters.
The fourth thing you have to understand about your perspective is it will change over time. Where I stand today, with what I know now, is a very different place versus who I was and what I knew 40 years ago, or 25 years ago, or even last year.
If your goal is to learn and grow, assumptions you held, things that you thought were ‘for sure’, and lessons you learned from others will be disproven. They won’t be correct, and you’ll have to change your perspective on things.
Changing your perspective is part of life. Part of learning and growing. Part of maturing, and part of reaching your own potential.
Once you learn what you need to know, to accomplish what you thought you wanted to accomplish, might not be relevant anymore. You might have a new reality, and a new skillset, that can take you so much farther.
I view it like climbing a hill.
When you are at the bottom of a hill, you have limited vision. You can only see so far because you are literally blocked by the hill in front of you.
As you begin to climb, and you get higher, your perspective of the world changes. You can see farther, see different things, than you could before. A
nd finally, when you reach the summit, everything looks different. You can see and understand things you couldn’t imagine before.
You can see farther, and understand there are different paths to choose from.
With this new view in mind, you might change your vision. Evolve your life, and set a new direction.
That’s OK.
What you know now, you didn’t know then, and if you take the time to assess your new reality, you may choose a better path for your future.
So understand where you are, have a vision of where you want to go, then move.
Go out there, get after it, do what needs to be done, and change the world.