A Change of Perspective
While my perspective has changed throughout my life, I still need a change of perspective today.
It is all too easy to look at what you do not have.
The things that you have not yet accomplished, the ongoing processes and insufficient results, and on and on.
Despite my philosophy and conscious reality creation work, I still find myself looking at what I haven’t got yet.
For example – I’m still not earning the kind of money I believe that I should be via the articles I post to Medium. Despite having an excellent number of followers – my earnings in no way reflect this.
My novels are not earning the kind of money I think they should be. I am not looking to become a bestseller, yet – but earning a reasonable living off my work shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Let’s call a spade a spade. While money isn’t exactly lacking in my life, the numbers – to be more comfortable and secure – are not what I desire for them to be. This tends to be a regular source of stress and occasional strife in my life.
But this focus on lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and what I do not have doesn’t serve me. In fact, it never has, and it never will.
I know this. Intuitively, instinctually, intellectually, I know this. Hell, I have been writing about this for almost 9 years.
So why is it I get caught up in focusing on what is not here, now?
First, I need to look back at my long-held beliefs and life experiences of the past. Then, work here and now on changing my perspective. That will best drive me towards my desired goals for the future.
Join me, and let’s gain some perspective here.
A look back for knowledge
Too many people look to the past to define the future. But by-and-large the past is just that – past. That’s not to say there aren’t tons of worthwhile learning experiences therein. It just cannot be restored in either the present or the future.
Okay, that’s out of the way. Let me share how I got where I am now.
When I was 5 my parents divorced. Soon after, my dad moved halfway across the country. My mom raised my sister and me – and she did an amazing job.
She instilled in me courtesy, the need to say please and thank you, and tons of other important life lessons to help me be a good person in the world.
However, unintentionally, she also instilled in me ideas about how money works that would embed themselves deeply.
For example, my mom pushed me to use my intelligence to pursue traditional money-making careers. Doctor, lawyer, business mogul, etc. At the same time, she talked a lot about how we didn’t have enough money on our side of the family – but the other side of the family were selfish and didn’t share their money as freely as she believed that they should.
Hence, I developed a desire to have money – but guilt about it at the same time. Money, I believed, makes a person more worthy and deserving of a good life – but at the same time doesn’t make good people.
Hence, as an adult, I have a particularly complicated relationship with money. Despite working with the Law of Attraction, I excel at sending mixed signals. I draw it to me and repel it simultaneously.
And of course, I chose nothing traditional in my approach to work.
Shifting my perspective – still looking back
Note – I am in no way blaming my mom for anything here. Yes, she provided the template upon which I imprinted my own beliefs – but that’s just how these things happen. Now, as an adult, blame fixes nothing – it’s all on me to change or not.
Right. Moving on.
After college, I was incredibly indecisive. While there was a vague notion of what I wanted for my life, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Half-assed pursuit of a couple of career paths ensued, but hardly even rocked the boat of the comfort zone I had established via my friendships. So, instead, I bounced between jobs, and homes, and relationships.
Throughout my 20s and 30s, I dated quite a few women, held around 10 different jobs and lived in 4 or 5 different places. I was terrified of settling in case I got it wrong.
Back then I was seldom calm, high-strung, often worried, and seldom – if ever – Zen about anything at all. As I tell people who did not know me back then – you missed nothing good.
After getting hit by a car crossing a street – and the year of recovery from that – when I was 27, for the first time I began to explore a change of perspective. Almost becoming permanently disabled will do that to you.
Yet it wasn’t until I worked with the best therapist I’ve ever seen, in my mid-30s, that I began to REALLY alter my perspective. That led to being calmer, less worried about life overall, more Zen, and working less on being who I thought people wanted me to be – and to be who I desired to be.
Just beginning the process changed my life thoroughly.
A change of perspective – then to now
The therapist from my mid-30s helped me to gain a viewpoint on my beliefs and how they formed long, long ago. It was like nothing I had ever done before. This led to me beginning to release crap I had been carrying needlessly for years and to stop living for other people and start living for me.
Specifically, I stopped trying to be who and what I thought others wanted me to be. Instead, I began to work on being who and what I wanted to be.
In my late 30s, I began to focus more on this whole writing thing. All my life I loved to write – why was I so scared to go for it and make it into my career? The answer, at the time, was old data, the notions of the arts not paying, and debts that haunted me at the time. Still, I breathed into it and began to shift my perspective and change my approach.
This would lead me to the first completely stable relationship I had ever entered. She was someone I could relate to, who made me a better person – while I believe I helped make her a better person, too. Surprising lots of people who had known me throughout my tumultuous dating habits – she became my wife.
This began the period of my life I’m working from now. I started to write quite a lot more, began to build this philosophy, and expand my practices of conscious reality creation, mindfulness, positivity, and other self-awareness/self-care/self-improvement experiences.
There’s still room for improvement. But that’s always the case because change is the only constant in the Universe.
I am sharing this because I want to show both myself and you that I have done it before. Thus, I can do it again.
Here and now while perpetually in motion
Everything I have read or listened to on the topics of self-improvement and personal growth says the same thing. Be present in the now. Focus on the good not the bad. Focus on abundance, not lack, scarcity, and insufficiency.
See where you are going as though you are there, right now. Don’t put it in the future – put it in the now. Focus on the good, not the bad.
I need to change my perspective and stop looking at what I do not have. To do that, I need to work more on altering some very old, outdated beliefs. I must alter my self-talk. Rather than lament the money I feel I should be earning that I presently haven’t – I need to be talking about the abundance I have.
For example, I am making more than enough money on my writing. My book sales are constantly growing. I do not struggle with money because it is abundant in my life.
A simple change of perspective can make all the difference in being where I desire to be tomorrow by being clearer today. Mindfulness is conscious awareness of who I am, where I am, here and now. That allows me to get from here to there with more clarity.
Change of perspective requires a shift in focus to what I do have rather than what I don’t. It’s a matter of looking at abundance instead of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency.
I acknowledge that I have come a long way in this life – and I am in an amazing place now while in motion to unimaginable awesomeness ahead.
When had a change of perspective improved your present and your outlook?
This is the four-hundred and sixty-fifth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Additionally, I desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook. Thank you!
Follow me here!
