THE POSITIVE POWER OF PERSPECTIVE
This is the third part in my series on mindset and the significant impact it can have on your life, your health and your ability to overcome injury and illness. I’ve written previously about the power of words and the value of using questions in more meaningful ways. Today, I’d like to touch on the importance of “perspective.” Perspective is the ability to experience something in more ways than one, depending on how you look at it. Keeping things in perspective can make the difference between moving forward in a positive way or shutting down and giving up. One of my longtime clients expresses this with the simple formula: E + R= O or Experiences + Reactions = Outcomes.
The way we look at something affects the way we feel about it and the way we act on it. Our actions determine our realities and our outcomes and are driven by the perspective from which we choose to experience our daily lives. The things in our lives don’t change; the way we experience them does. Fortunately, with the help of a few strategies, perspective is something we can control. As we direct it, we change our focus and forge our destiny.
No matter how much we prepare for it, life will always have its ups and downs. Successful people are those who are able to take advantage of the good times and turn the challenging ones into opportunities for positive change. A strategy that I learned years ago is to question what’s going on to allow yourself to see things from a new perspective; one that has the potential to be really great.
Here are my two favourite questions to ask when confronted with a life-challenge:
1. What is great about this situation? Depending on what’s going on, this can be really hard. It’s important to remember, however, that the point is not to change what is happening, but to change how you experience what is happening and then act upon it.
Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2016 and then went on the most successful concert tour of his career. The publicity from the tour gave him a platform to start a foundation supporting reconciliation efforts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada as well as to raise money for Sunnybrook Hospital, where he was treated. He was honoured last year with an Order of Canada as well as with an honorary title from the Assembly of First Nations. Although he passed away earlier this month, his foundations live on and continue to generate significant amounts of money and awareness for their various causes. While he would have been easily forgiven for wasting away in private, he saw the immense opportunity his illness provided him with to enact positive change in the world and lived a fulfilling life right to the end.
Perhaps the Downie example is a bit extreme, but consider how you could not only “make the best” of a situation, but actually thrive BECAUSE of the situation.
2. How can I use this to create something great? A colleague of mine had the misfortune of going through a personal bankruptcy. After all of the emotion and inner turmoil, he asked himself “How can I use this to make myself better?” The answer was to schedule regular financial counselling sessions, to implement new budgeting systems and to re-establish personal credit while investing for his future. Now years clear from bankruptcy, he says that going bankrupt was the best thing that ever happened to him and his stress levels are lower, his chronic back pain has mostly resolved, he sleeps better and he is happier overall.
The strategies I’ve written about in this series have the power to not only change the way you think and feel, but, they can change your life for the better in ways that you can’t even imagine. Remember that no matter what you are going through, you are in control.