Can a simple change in perspective can make you happier?
You may have heard the idiom that goes along the lines of “He could not see the forest for the trees”. You will also probably find that if you think about it that there have been many times where you have been stuck in your thinking and in certain situations you may have been beating yourself up unnecessarily because of it and this can be very restrictive if not plain unhealthy.
To illustrate how different perspectives can affect how we see the world and subsequently effect how we feel and react.
Lets imagine two men are out on a hike in the countryside. Both men have been friends for many years and come from similar backgrounds. After a few hours of walking along a thin trail through the forest and past bubbling streams they are in awe of the beauty surrounding them. Finally, the trail leads them to the top of a hill overlooking a beautiful valley with a small village. The village looks to be very old, the paint has peeled off most of the buildings making them look dilapidated. The roads are sand roads and there is a lot of dust as the cars move around. The villagers are going about their business. A lot of them are sitting around with what seems to be their families and friends. There are kids running around kicking a ball and playing on the dust roads.
The one man looks down at the village and is disgusted. “Look at these poor people, they don’t look after their things, just sitting around doing nothing. How lazy? Who can live in in filth like this? Something must be done! This just ruins what would be a perfect view.” The second man looks down at the village and thinks “Wow! Look at how lucky these people are to be living in such a beautiful environment. Look at how much fun the kids are having. The people really seem to really value friendship and family. They seem so happy and fortunate to have each other. The world needs more of this.”
Two different perspectives from two different men looking at the exact same scene. Which man do you think had the better experience and is the happier out of the two? Which man do you relate to, and which would you prefer to be?
To be able to control our perspective of the world and of ourselves is a very powerful tool.
An example of where our perspective can affect our wellbeing is when we rate ourselves on a vertical scale and we then relate this scale directly to our self-worth. How this works is that every time we make a mistake, or we do something wrong we make a judgement of ourselves and the needle on the scale goes down a notch and with it so does our sense of self-worth or value. Each time it happens we devalue ourselves more and more and since we can never go up on the scale, we never seem to recover from that feeling of being less than what we actually are. That is unless we change our perspective of the scale and put it on its side turning it into a horizontal timeline. Then, instead of a mistake or wrongdoing being a measurement of who we are we can look at it as a simple moment in time. A stage in our lives that is in the past Something we can take corrective action on for the future instead of it being a non-negotiable permanent blip on our own inbuilt record of ourselves.
So next time you find yourself beating yourself up or judging yourself to harshly stop, breath and think about it. Which scale are you using and is it benefiting you? Ask yourself “How bad is it really in the greater scale of things and what can I learn from this?”
Remember to see the forest you need to get above the trees. You are going to need to make a conscious effort to get up onto that mountain for a different perspective.
If you found this article helpful you may also like the article on Overcoming Worry.
“It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
