I was working on a project yesterday afternoon and after noticing my head was starting to hurt, I took my glasses off for a second to rest my eyes. As I started to put my glasses back on, I noticed they were dirty. Like, really dirty. This is not an uncommon experience for most of us who wear glasses. But isn’t it sort of amazing that I didn’t notice how dirty they were when I was wearing them?
The lessons perspective can teach us are everywhere.
As many of us feel we are no longer on ‘cruise control’ (thank you, Mercury Retrograde), we’re slowing down and taking strange detours. Some of us feel like we’re at a complete stand-still. I had an experience this week that caused me to feel that way, like there’s no safe place for me to aim my frustration resulting in a totally sluggish disposition. You know that feeling? It sucks.
When I took off my glasses, I was fascinated by how so many of us are walking around seeing the world a particular way not even realizing that we have dirty glasses on. And, if our view of the world we live in is clouded or unclear, how would we know unless we were forced to examine it? So what could trigger you to revisit your perspective? Well, a setback of course!
That setback could be a headache. It could be the ending of a relationship. It could be finding out that your coworker is trying to undermine you. It could be the inflammation in your joints acting up again. It could be a conversation you have with your significant other that makes you realize you’ll have to become more patient. It could be a financial burden you don’t know how you’ll be able to manage.
These are the types of situations that cause you to slow down and select a course. If you take the time to pause before deciding what to do by listening and examining your predispositions, your fears, and your perspectives, you may realize that in order to achieve your goal, or in order to resolve your issue, you must make a change within yourself. It’s always easy to blame something externally.
Physically, our minds have the ability to fill in the gaps of whatever is missing in our actual view. It explains why I’m able to see with dirty glasses. It explains why if a letter or word is missing in a sentence, my brain can fill in that blank. We’re not as reliant on everything to go as ‘perfectly’ as we think!
Mentally, we have the same power to fill in the gaps of what we’re seeing because the power exists within our minds and not the eyes. We can clean the glasses. We can cut people out of our lives. We can set boundaries. We can do all of those external things. But internally we must also appreciate our power to perceive.
Life will send us circumstances and events. Our minds frame the story. You are being given an opportunity to re-frame your story. You are allowed to take pause and use this time to evaluate before you decide what your story should be. Clean your glasses. Handle whatever isn’t going according to your plan. Just remember that your plan, your body, your relationships, and your life are meant to evolve and change over time. Use your setbacks to help you change your perspective, and let them orient you towards the power you have within yourself instead of externally. Only YOU get to decide how it all fits into your story.