Perspective

🌥Perspective has been on my mind a lot lately.⛅️

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➡️We periodically experience things in life that put everything into perspective.

➡️A loss, a birth, an experience with nature, a meaningful conversation…

➡️I am so curious about how easy it is to lose a perspective that can feel so crystalized in the moment.

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Over the past few days, I have committed to observing my mind slip in and out of perspective. I have been fascinated by how quickly I can move in and out.

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This paying attention has allowed me to create more awareness, and, in turn, I am able to find perspective more quickly than I once was.

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Something I have noticed in my 30’s is that I find perspective much faster than I did in my 20’s. Anyone else?

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I attribute gaining perspective more quickly to many factors. I’ll list three of them here:

✅More lived experiences: I’ve now experienced more loss, more life, more challenges, and more successes. These experiences give me perspective that is more lasting.

✅Meditation practice: Probably the most significant factor in gaining and sustaining perspective for me has been a daily meditation practice. My mind feels more spacious…there is more patience, more acceptance, more grace, more compassion, and more calm these days. Being able to observe my thoughts and feelings without always attaching to them has been powerful.

✅Gratitude practice: Expressing gratitude in written and verbal form is something that sustains perspective for me.

➡️I want to clarify something here, because I think gratitude can often be mistaken as a “Pollyanna” perspective or viewing the world with “rose-tinted glasses”.

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For me, it is about taking it all in, the pleasant, the unpleasant, and everything in between, and choosing to find and express gratitude.

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I’ve made a commitment to do my best to acknowledge all feelings and emotions and to experience them in the moment. I try not to stuff any emotions down, and I try not to let emotions take over. Regardless of what is going on around me, or within me, there is always something I can find to be grateful for.

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Do I always feel grateful? Absolutely not. However, there is always something I can find to be grateful for.

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➡️As I was thinking about the factors that contribute to gaining perspective, I noticed that many of them were under my control to practice or change. For example, we cannot control our lived experiences or how much lived experience we have, but we can control practicing meditation/mindfulness and gratitude.

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⛅️My hope is that I can sustain perspective longer so that I can engage myself and others with more clarity, patience, and compassion.