The Ultimate Life Changing Perspective
Do we speak before thinking?
"Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations." -Samuel Ullman
I want you to reflect on the quote above for a few moments and then answer the question I'm about to ask you.
Do we stop and think what are other people really thinking or feeling when they don't agree with us?
What about when they're angry or jealous and make a harsh statement about us?
Do we try to understand the perspective they're coming from?
Based on my experience I can say that most of the times we DON'T!!
We usually just let emotional bursts take control of us and react with the same anger or despair as them or even worse.
The purpose of this article is to bring consciousness and awareness to the manner in which our perspective in life can totally change the way we experience our journey of becoming the strongest version of ourselves.
Perspective isn't negotiable
There are seven billions of us on this planet and at the same time seven billions of perspectives about everything you can imagine. Ask a hundred people about love, money, sports, politics or anything else and you'll get a hundred different perspectives.
This is what makes us unique, helping the human gene evolve and expand continously.
However, conflicts in human relationships are very frequent mainly because of our arrogance and selfish characteristic. We've all had that sense of superiority at least once in our life, thinking that we know better than the other, that our solutions to problems are more useful without contemplating to the perspective of the people we were talking to.
Further, I will be listing some situations where looking from different perspectives brings a lot of benefits to our journey of becoming the strongest version of ourselves.
“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?”
— Shannon L. AlderChange your shoes
Have you ever wanted to go out or on a trip with your friends but your parents said a pretty clear "NO!"?
What was your mood after that? I guess it wasn't a loving and kind place but more likely you were frustrated and angry.
That's when two different perspectives collided. The perspective of your parents that maybe thought you're not responsible enough to take care of yourself and they imagined you getting drunk, smoking, fighting or something else that could get you unwanted consequences afterwards.
On the other part is your perspective where all you were seeing was fun, happiness and joy without thinking that something may go wrong.
There are a lot of situations like this where two or more perspectives bump into each other and if we're not making the effort to understand and work them out usually the end product isn't on our favour.
What if when our parents decline our desires we simply just stop for a second and ask ourselves from what perspective are they looking from when we tell them what we want to do? What dangers can appear in the situations we're getting into?
You see how this simple question can point out what are our parents thinking?
Now we can understand that maybe they've had experiences like ours that ended bad and don't want us to encounter that too.
All our relationships can get better if we openly choose to put ourselves in other's people shoes and realize where they're coming when they don't agree with us, they're angry, sad, jealous or they're bullying.
That colleague that bullied you maybe had an alcoholic father that was doing the same to him, that boss that yelled at you maybe just found out that his company is going bankrupt. You never know what people are going through!
So next time someone bothers you stop and think a few more seconds about their context before letting your negative emotions break out.
The world is your mirror
Remember “we can only see things within others that we see within ourselves.”
This is such a strong statement and one that should be on the cover page of our mind magazine before reacting to people or situations. This points to the fact that whenever you feel certain perceived negative emotions towards others, maybe is a good idea to check your inner world regarding repressed emotions, conflicts, anxieties or resentments perhaphs this is the reason we're getting angry, sad or jealous.
Another valuable recommandation is to look at people like a mirror, with the purpose of telling something about yourself that otherwise you wouldn't see.
Succes And Perspective
Perspective is unquestionably a important thing when following the journey to success because it allows you to change the way you look at whatever struggles you encounter in life so that you stay motivated and have a purpose to work towards.
Sometimes it looks like everything is going against you and you become demoralized and frustrated since you work so hard for your goals and still you're not seeing any results, but if you develop the ability of changing your perspective and looking at things from different angles you may find out that there are some mistakes in the plan you're sticking to or that your actions don't match your mouth.
Changing your perspective, can also help you to embrace the struggles and failures by shifting your mindset into thinking that those struggles and failures are opportunities to learn, grow and ultimately the stepping stones to succes.
Wayne Dier once said:
"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Before reaching the next level at anything in life, we must first change our perspective about it so we can see as clear as possible what that "next level" exactly means. What actions do we need to take, what we need to sacrifice, who can help us, what books we need to read, how much time we need to invest, etc.
After all, the only things we can control are our thoughts and actions therefore we can look at hard times as something that needs to be endured and tolerated or as a experience that ultimately leads to growth and evolution.
It's your decision whether you see the glass half full or half empty.
Conclusion
Finally, our perspective of everything that life is can either break us or make us.
We can live a purposeful, meaningful, happy and enjoyable life by looking at struggles as something productive and practical, developing our abilities of understanding people and controlling our emotional reactions or we can remain average, complaining that we have bad luck, people are against us and success is only for lucky people without realizing that our own perspective, behaviour and action is what separates us from living the life we desire.
Keep Calm And Forgive
As a last recommandation regarding our relationships with other people, here it is a video of Robin Sharma giving advice about forgiving people which also relates to our topic since understanding other people's perspectives and feelings makes forgiving much easier. Enjoy!
© 2019 Hacicu Bogdan