It Depends on Your Perspective
How you see life, the Universe, and everything is a matter of perspective.
All the ways in which you experience life are a matter of perspective.
Take Monday, for example. I know a LOT of people who get to Monday and automatically get negative. This is how they approach work, school, the daily grind, and so on. Monday morning is unwelcome.
That’s one perspective. What if, instead, Monday were to represent new opportunities? How do you approach work when you LOVE what you do?
This is a matter of perspective. Perspective is one of the few things over which you have control.
People love to feel in control over their lives. And yet, often they don’t. That’s because you can do nothing about outside influences.
Unfortunately, you have zero control over how anyone else thinks, feels, and acts. You have no control over the weather, traffic, power outages, internet connectivity, and so on. These are all matters outside of yourself and outside of your control.
What DO you control? On the surface, you control your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intent. Beneath the surface, you can control your mindset/headspace/psyche. All of that combined gives you control of your perspective.
You may find that unrealistic. To quote Einstein:
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Why? Because reality is a matter of perspective.
What contributes to perspective?
At its core, your perspective is made up of several things. Your life experiences, environment, beliefs, habits, thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and all that. Further, how you react to outside influences will alter your perspective on everything.
Take American politics, for example. Everyone sees the United States from a different perspective. Some of that is based on the region you are from. It is also based on education, religion, income level, skin color, other ethnic backgrounds, gender, and so on.
Politicians, knowing this, use that to create their power bases.
How? Fear. They see the nation from your perspective and manipulate you by playing on your fears. Because this is a fear-based society this is easy to do. That, in turn, further shows you the rightness of your perspective versus the “other” and theirs.
Unfortunately, we need to face an important fact. Many, many people, after formal schooling is done, seek no further learning. The formal schooling system in the United States puts very little emphasis on critical thinking.
That, of course, is by design. Critical thinkers tend not to need a lot of leadership from others.
This is NOT a dig on teachers – it’s the system. The ability to even begin critical thinking doesn’t come until your early twenties when the frontal lobe is fully developed. This is – except for grad students – generally a couple of years after college or vocational training is completed.
Why does this matter? Because the ability for critical thinking opens you to recognize not only your perspective but that of other people. This allows you to consciously seek change.
Making changes
Critical thinking lets you see just WHAT your perspective is. It’s not just that you recognize you have a unique perspective – you also can see what it’s comprised of. This is where someone raised by homophobic parents or racists see for themselves that nothing is wrong with someone who is not straight and other races are equal to your own.
Hence, you can change your perspective. When I was in college in the early 1990s, I relocated from the suburbs of Minneapolis to upstate New York. I majored in Theatre. Hence, I encountered my first homosexuals.
In High School in Minnesota in the 1990s, any homosexuals were closeted or not publicly out. This was not the case in college.
Every year, on National Coming Out Day, there was a huge gathering of people at the Free Speech Rock in the main quad of the school. While I had no issue with gay people, I gave it a wide berth freshman year.
Sophomore year, I didn’t go out of my way to avoid this gathering.
Junior year, I was on the outskirts of it, offering soft support.
Senior year, I was right at the rock, supporting a friend coming out. I cheered and supported everyone who was expressing who they were.
Over those four years, I changed my perspective. Later, I came to realize that knowing what made up my perspective made it easier to make future changes.
Expectation is a matter of perspective
So, when you come into Monday expecting it to suck you set it up to suck. Think today is going to be awful? You’re right, it probably will be.
Why do that to yourself? How has it become so very acceptable to be miserable? When you stop and think about it, it’s truly mind-boggling.
Expectation is a matter of perspective. Hence, when you change your perspective you can change your expectations.
This is why I started to write about Positivity every Monday. My thinking is this: if you can shift your perspective away from all the negativity to positivity, you change what you will expect. That, in turn, will change what you are likely to get.
Of course, you cannot change what happens outside of yourself. There isn’t anything you can do if you get into a car accident on the way to work. Further, you cannot control if you will get laid-off out of the blue, get yelled at, dumped, or otherwise are impacted by the actions of another. Those actions could come from someone you know and like – or a nameless/faceless entity.
As Bob Proctor said,
“What you think about, you bring about.”
Consciousness creates reality. Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction or not, this still tends to be completely true.
Mindfulness for change
The best way to get ahold of your perspective is by practicing mindfulness.
This is not some complex, hooky-spooky concept. This is the simple matter of being conscious and aware, here and now. At this moment.
On the surface, that begins with awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intent. When you are aware of these immediate, surface matters, you gain insight. That insight will open the door to your subconscious mind, wherein lies your mindset/headspace/psyche and perspective.
Once you know it, you can change it. But to truly learn what it is – you must be conscious of it.
If you perceive the world as going to hell in a handbasket, your overall perspective is most likely negative. So, if you would rather not spend all your time feeling down and convinced nothing matters – you should strive to change your perspective.
One important caveat to this: It only applies to YOU. You haven’t the ability to change the perspective of anyone else. You can show them the door – you can’t open it for them. Trying to force this will cause resentment and, likely, resistance to changing perspective. Or much of anything.
How YOU see life, the Universe, and everything is a matter of perspective. You are empowered to change it. Mindfulness, positivity, and getting to know yourself are the keys to making that happen.
Will you use those keys to unlock the door and seek a new perspective?
Changing your perspective isn’t hard
But it does require mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intent.
Knowing that your perspective of the Universe is unique to you and not set in stone, you can work to change it. When you work to understand the makings of your perspective, and then act on making changes where you desire to change – that ultimately empowers you.
When you feel empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that can spread to people around you. This can create a feedback loop of awareness and positivity.
You can build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That can be the impetus to improve numerous aspects of your life for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of the current situation, and generate yet more positivity and gratitude.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of immense positivity. That positivity can generate even more good energies – and that, like you, is always worthwhile.
This is the three-hundred and forty-eighth entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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