Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life

Image generated with OpenAI by the author

  Your perspective can mean the difference between a miserable life and a great life.

  Our perspective has a significant impact on how we view and interpret any situation. It's like looking at a coin; you might see only one side, and someone else only sees the other. If you only look at your side, you can't understand why the other person describes the same coin differently.

  Adjusting your perspective will bring more to your life and to others.

  I've learned that the ability to adjust your perspective will change how you see a situation. Sometimes for the better, other times for the worse.

  We tend to be reactive, viewing everything through our perception.

  As humans, we're emotional. This amplifies our reactions to a situation. This brings conflict, misunderstanding, and poor decisions.

  We're not thinking…

  Let's put this into a scenario that will bring further understanding.

  In the past, I would get excited for others to read my writing. My thoughts would be along the lines of "Obviously they'll love it", because that's how I would feel. The anticipation would be for the compliments.

The idea of constructive feedback wasn't on my mind. (This is now a completely foreign concept to me.)

I would perceive any constructive feedback as negative. The idea that the reader was trying to help escaped me. This was something I needed to learn. 

I didn't have the correct perspective.

  A perfect example of this, was a time I asked my dad to read a script for a short film titled "The Last Cigarette". I wrote it with a film noir-inspired characters. The main character owned a bar and happened to be a smoker. He meets a girl one night at his bar, and they find themselves bonding over classic Humphrey Bogart films. You later find out the woman is married, creating conflict for the characters, who have fallen for each other. In the end, the main character lets the girl go to prevent him from being the reason dishonor would come to her and her marriage.

  My father gave me feedback that I didn't expect. He thought it was a decent story, but didn't understand why the main character was a smoker, and why the title was "The Last Cigarette".

My metaphor was lost on him.

  A pack of cigarettes represented a story arc in the character's life. Each cigarette represented a moment or memory with the girl. Once he reached the last cigarette in the pack, it was the end of that story.

  I took my father's feedback personally at first. The core of the story was based on something that had happened to me. This made me overly sensitive.

  After a short time, the realization hit me. I wasn't looking at the feedback objectively.

  If aspects of my story and the symbolism I was using weren't clear to the reader, then maybe I needed to think about how I can fix that. I needed to look at it from my dad's perspective. I needed to change my point of view to see what was missing. Just because I understood something doesn't mean others did.

 You see what I did there?

I took ownership of the situation and needed to look at it from a new angle. There was no reason to be upset or insulted. I needed to be objective.

  All my dad was trying to do was help.

  Dad is a writer and editor. It's in his nature to give constructive feedback. I should have thought about that at the time, but I also needed to learn the lesson.

  It turns out his feedback was needed. The story improved after the changes.

  This is just one small situation out of a lifetime, where one small change in perspective can change everything.

  Let's look at life as a whole.

  Did you know you had a 1 in 400 trillion chance of being born? The chances of getting struck by lightning are higher; that's only a 1 in 15,000 chance. You're lucky to be alive based on these numbers!

  I know I'm grateful for my life.

Changing your perspective is a tool that helps you understand others more deeply, giving you the ability to communicate more clearly, negotiate more effectively, and build stronger relationships. But it also improves you, it challenges your assumptions, expands your thinking, and fosters personal growth by encouraging humility, empathy, and adaptability.

  Share with me how you adjust your perspective to bring improvement into your life.