The Transformative Power of Shifting Your Perspective

I’ve been thinking about shifting perspective.  
 
For years in fact. I read a book many years ago called Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono that was very helpful in my high-pressure corporate career. It offered an approach to problem solving and idea generation that was helpful for understanding and expanding creativity, helpful for finding insights to face the many challenges and issues with more openness and serenity. It taught me how to stop, take a breath and a step back, and consciously look at things from a different angle. From there I could always find new ideas and better solutions. This energized and inspired my work, eliminated a lot of the stress of my job. And these strategies still help me in my life today.  It’s all about shifting perspective.  
 
What version of yourself could emerge if you shed the weight of self-limiting beliefs, if you stepped away from your habitual thinking patterns and embraced a new way of seeing the world?
  
Shifting perspective is transformative. It’s an intentional process to shift our mindset, change our habitual thinking patterns and responses, consider alternative viewpoints. So that we can see and do things differently. 
  
We all face challenging, stressful situations, problems we need to solve.  The world especially seems filled with them right now.  We often face these challenges with fear and anxiety.  We get stuck in a rut, automatically thinking our usual negative thoughts and proceeding with our ingrained habitual actions.  
  
Instead of staying with our habitual patterns, why not learn to look at each of our challenges from a different perspective to find new ideas and insights, new and better ways to approach and solve them?   Instead of letting fear distort our perspective and lead us to see things negatively, can we step away from the fear and see the challenges in a different light, as an opportunity instead of an obstacle?  
  
Shifting perspective helps us to build our resilience, create better relationships, boost our creativity, reduce stress and anxiety, give us new tools and skills for navigating a stressful world. Shifting perspective helps us to develop a more balanced, flexible and compassionate way to approach every situation in life.
  
But you have to work at it, shifting perspective doesn’t come naturally to most of us. Intentionally shifting our perspective requires us to consciously work on these 4 things: 

• Expanding our awareness - yes, of course, mindfulness, meditation and yoga  can help us here!
  
• Stepping back to see the context (see the bigger picture) in which our challenge/situation/problem/idea exists, shifting the focus.
  
• Expanding our understanding and empathy, so that we can see things from another person’s perspective, find new insights.
• Challenging our assumptions and reframing our habitual thought patterns,and even our habitual actions and responses.  This includes our habitual judgement.

And here are some of the ways we can do this:

1. Practice mindfulness - Mindfulness is training your brain to see things as they are.  It helps to expand our awareness, to be conscious of our thoughts and thought patterns, to realize that we are not our thoughts, that we can change them or let them go. Mindfulness also trains us to be non-judgmental.  Try mindful breathing or a body scan meditation.  Or THESE practices.
   
2. Meditate daily - Meditation of any kind can help enhance your awareness, de-program your negative thought patterns, boost your compassion and empathy, and help you find new insights.
   
3. Get grounded with yoga - Yoga cultivates mindfulness by encouraging you to focus on your physical experience, breath, and sensations without judgment.  Yoga is by nature a very grounding practice if you practice mindfully. 
   
4. Stay in gratitude - Gratitude practice helps us to see and appreciate what we have instead of focusing on what we don’t have.  An automatic shift in our perspective. Learn more HERE.
   
5. Travel and explore the world - Travel expands our horizons, gives us access to new cultures, new people, new perspectives.  This can foster empathy and understanding, challenge our own beliefs.   See these LEARNINGS from my Himalayan adventure.
   
6. Learn something new - Read about a new topic or learn a new skill.  It leads to expanding your horizons, challenging your thoughts and expectations, helps you to see things with fresh eyes and a beginner mind.  And this may lead to new insights and innovative solutions.
   
7. Talk with somebody who has an opposing view - Do so with kindness, compassion and empathy, and try to see things from their perspective.  Who knows where that could lead?
   
8. Learn to let go- Letting go of the negative stuff we carry around with us frees up space in our mind and our life for serenity and grace, for new energy, new growth, new opportunities, new directions. Letting go is freedom. Learn more HERE.

What will you do to transform your life today?

Here's a fun way to see things differently...

When you are stressed you eat ice cream, cake, chocolate and sweets.  Why?  Because “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts”. — Snoopy