It’s a good question, isn’t it?
How do we get perspective on something?
How do we change the way we see a situation? It’s a question I ask of you, because it’s a question that seems to have been asked of me, in all of the recent conversations I’ve had.
This thing happened. I don’t like it. How do I see it differently? How do I make sense of it? How do I come to terms with it?
What is perspective?
You will know by now that here at the Daily Reminders we like to strip away all the complexity and have a look at the underlying principles of how something’s actually put together – see if we can understand how it works at a fundamental level.
So what is ‘perspective’, anyway?
Let’s take a trip to etymology corner.
Hmmm, curious. Observing through something, you say? It’s almost as if this single word—yet again!—demonstrates something about the way we experience reality…
🧐
We’ve used many metaphors for this ‘something-we-see-through’ in the past, most notably the aperture through which we experience life, or more simply, the goggles we’re wearing.
Everything we experience in life comes through the filter of our left brain, or our Thought System 📦.
(There’s no escaping that one, people – it’s the human experience!)
So I suppose, when we ask, “How do I get perspective on this?” what we're really saying, is:
📦🗣️ “How do I get a different/better perspective on this?”
And the answer to what trips us up in our quest for perspective, lies in the very question itself…
Swapping out goggles
Look, let’s not beat around the bush here. Minds might appear unfathomably complex (to minds, using minds to study minds, lol) but at the end of the day they’re a bit, erm… dim.
(I really had to rein it in there.)
It’s not their fault. They don’t really know about anything that's outside of themselves. They’re these closed systems—like little cerebral data centres—hoovering up information and making out like that's actual reality.
So in all the conversations I've had with people, their Thought System 📦 has taken what it knows of the inside-out understanding—essentially that it's a thinking problem they have on their hands here—and concluded that what-they're-seeing-through (i.e. the perspective they hold; the experience they're having) needs to be changed.
Brilliant. Makes total sense, doesn't it? Something to actually do about the problem!
(You've got to give minds a bit of credit – they are very eager to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in! 😆)
It's like ego knows life's being viewed through a particular lens, so it goes rummaging around through its box of lenses, to find one that it likes!
But this is just brute-force swapping out one belief (e.g. this is a bad situation), with another (e.g. actually I need to accept and move on) and if it worked like that with any degree of success, we'd all have chosen peaceful, loving perspectives on everything, already, surely?
(I know I would.)
💁🏻♂️
There's no chooser
And here's what makes today's Daily Reminders a bit of a Sunday Spiritual: it's the elephant in the room, or should I say it's the “I” in that sentence –
“How do I get a different/better perspective on this?”
Because that sense of a self, controlling things, making things happen, picking new perspectives, driving the bus… that's just more of the same mental noise that's bothering us in the first place.
‘You’ (i.e. that noisy guest in your head, that's always—and only—observing and commentating) don't get a different/better perspective!
That's not something that a Thought System 📦 can manufacture, with its endless recycling of old material. In fact, it's usually the opposite, isn't it? – the more we think about a situation, the more entrenched it tends to become in our lives.
(You can take it off your To Do list 📋. You're welcome.)
So how then?
If there's no chooser, and actively swapping out goggles doesn't work, what's left?
🤔
Nothing.
Which is kind of the point.
Just think back to the last time you really saw something differently. So differently that it changed your experience of it.
You weren't actively trying, were you? You weren't ruminating about it.
You'll have been out walking the dog; in conversation with someone; having a shower; listening to some music or a podcast; doing the washing up; hey, maybe even reading a Daily Reminder…?
(We can but hope 😇)
In all of these situations, our attention's not on the problem and our aperture has relaxed wide open. Not so much because we did anything, but because there wasn't much going on upstairs at all!
We were just getting on with life.
And a fresh perspective arrived, all on its own.
🎁
So the next time you catch yourself wondering, “How can I see this differently?” why not put the kettle on, instead?
Not as a technique or anything. Just to give yourself a welcome break from fretting, and enjoy a hot drink.
Think less. Live more.
😘
Giles
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Giles P Croft
There's always far less to do than you'd imagine.