The Prism of Perspective
Time to Blast Off
Your heart beats powerfully within your chest as adrenaline courses through your veins.
10, 9, 8… You are about to embark on the “ride of your life.” You want to know that the environment is optimal, enabling the greatest probability of success. Going off in a rocket ship is not one of those times we like to “wing it.”
Our lives don’t often have the immediate and profound feedback one gets when leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. Yet, the compounding effect of the rituals we choose to follow on our daily journey are also imperative if we wish to optimize our outcome.
Prism of Perspective Colors Our Perception
While we will invest the bulk of our focus in this program around gaining peaceful control and clear inspired perspective, it would be negligent not to remind everyone that everything we do in our lives is impacted by the “life energy” we bring to it. As such I will touch on it briefly as a refresher and if the content is new to you, I encourage you to invest more time and attention on my program called The Prism of Perspective.
One can think of the prism of perspective as three levers that can be manipulated to optimize the environment for success. Failing to attend to these levers leaves the environment very much up to chance. Overlooking or ignoring this has devastating consequences on our lives, restricting joy and reducing impact in every moment.
Returning momentarily to the rocket ship analogy, imagine the huge range of outcomes depending on the amount of pressure in the various systems. In one instance, you are off in space, traveling many times the speed of sound, driven with enough escape velocity to effortlessly move beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. At the other extreme, you don’t get off the launching pad.
Our experience in every moment is like the moment of blast off in that… our lives can be perceived across a broad spectrum. Where we land on this spectrum is dependent on how we control the levers of our expectations, our physiology, and the meaning we give to our experience. We can experience the world as unlimited, being a co-creator in this amazing world, or we can experience the world as restrictive and burdensome. It is our choice, and it effects everything.
Choose Our Experience by Intention or Default
These three levers work in unison to shift our life energy either towards being open, collaborative and celebrating at one extreme or closed down, victimized and defeated at the other.
This is so critical because, regardless of the quality of the process I am about to disclose, if you come to it with the expectation that it will be burdensome, if your physiology is disengaged, or if you frame the events that make up your life as if the universe were out to get you, you will fail to truly capitalize on the magic.
If on the other hand, you come to this process with great expectations, knowing that in a couple short weeks your life experience will be radically transformed for the better. If you engage the physiology of a champion and you see your gap as an opportunity to grow, then you are about to trade in your frustration and overwhelm for joyful and enthusiastic progress. Life is about to get very exciting.
Check out Part 2 of the video series “Living on Purpose”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE9vufjWjj0
Consciously Chosen Action Steps
1. Look for Opportunity Everywhere. You will be much more likely to find it. At any moment, from any circumstance, there is an array of possible outcomes. Cast your intention for the best future you can imagine, and you align with that future vibrationally, bringing your vision closer to reality.
2. Physiology of a Champion. Be vigilant about living with the physiology of a champion. To be your best, invite an athletic energy to fill your being. Be strong, flexible, and ready. Manage your physiology in moment and embrace the rituals that you know give you the health and vitality to live an empowered life.
3. Choose an Empowering Meaning. It is unfortunate, but so many choose to be offended by what is often the most negative interpretation of events. It is like an addiction. We must free ourselves from the need to be offended by the actions of others and instead interpret events in our lives in a way that leaves us the most resourceful. Since we can never really know what something means, we should choose the interpretation that leaves us the most empowered.
The Sun Also Rises
Caution, Heavy Fog
A thick fog has settled over our economy. Like cautious drivers, we have slowed our pace, scanning the horizon for obstacles that might present a danger. Hazard lights are flashing each time we turn on the news, read the paper, or even engage in conversation with our friends. In response, we clench our hands around the proverbial wheel, fighting to hang on to the lives to which we have become accustomed. Strain and struggle epitomize the energy that dominates our society.
Incomplete Perspective
This seemingly appropriate response to our current situation is not merely imperfect. It is contributing to and prolonging our economic quagmire. There are no harmless thoughts. Believing we are at the affect of these global challenges moves us away from proactive life design and into reactive acceptance. Every thought we have shapes our expectations, and influences the effort and energy we bring to our challenges. If we wish to move beyond this current economic environment, we must engage life with positive expectation.
At a casual glance, this metaphor of driving cautiously and reactively in the fog seems logical. However, viewing our situation from such a passive and defensive vantage point fails to recognize both our responsibility and opportunity. We are not merely the drivers in this scene, but we are also the sun beams which must shine hot and bright to burn off the fog and eliminate the artificial barriers to our growth.
The Fog is Lifting
While their drumbeat may currently be overwhelmed, many are recognizing the amazing opportunity before us. These thought leaders are excited by the possibility to build on a new foundation and to do so based on the universal principles that always succeed. This collaborative shifting of consciousness will enable us to tap into the power of synergy, fully engaging our collective potential to create the world we most desire.
The answer to our challenges is not going to present itself on the news. It will not come from outside. Meaningful life change comes from within. This is a great time to abide in the core message of Gandhi’s inspirational life to “be the change you want to see in the world.” If we want more trust, faith, courage, and passion in the world, first model it with our lives.
Moving from Inspiration to Implementation
So how do we transfer this from concept to implementation. Who is not moved by the idea of peaceful co-existence and abundant productivity for all. However, living at full speed presents many challenges that come may come upon us faster than we are equipped to handle. In the throws of life, many of us will forget to “be the change,” instead reacting defensively, and possibly aggressively to our subconscious fears. Our nature betrays us by instinctively going into a fight or flight mode to threats that require neither.
What encompasses unlimited promise is that we need not live out of our instincts. One of the distinctive human endowments is the ability we have to choose our response, rather than to live reactively. By recognizing that our life experience is never the result of what happens to us, we expand the space between the event and our response to it. This allows us to act in alignment with our values, even when that might not be our immediate response. Maintaining this awareness allows us to move out of “victim energy” and to reclaim control of our lives.
Without this conscious shift, we will continue to attract into our lives more evidence that supports the belief that the world is happening to us, rather than that we are creating our world. This passive perspective results in what many refer to a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer
Each of us has a primary paradigm, or lens through which we see the world. This determines the way we see things. This paradigm is influenced, though not controlled by the society within which we live. As the headlines have become increasingly negative, that societal influence has also become stronger and more consistent.
The Power to Choose
Fortunately, of far greater impact is a triad of choices we make in each moment:
1. what we will focus on
2. how we will manage our physical energy
3. the meaning we will give to the events in our lives
Living in the Moment
One of the great discoveries of personal development was first articulated in Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist imprisoned in Nazi death camps during WWII. His awareness came as a result of observing the impact that the camp had on its prisoners. What he found, and later proposed in his teachings was that it wasn’t the events of our life, but rather the interpretation of those events that most impacted our life experience. In other words, it wasn’t what happened to us that mattered so much as what we made that event mean.
Since that time, many have continued to study and support those findings. So why does this matter to us, and how can we take benefit from Frankl’s insights? By being present enough in our lives to choose our perspectives in away that serves us. What I mean by that is too often, through our addiction to drama, we frame things in the most horrifying way. By doing so, we may feel significant, even though that significance comes from the immensity of our perceived challenges. While immediately serving the need for significance, the long term consequences can be tremendously negative. Through this lens, we see a future that is fearful. This fear disconnects us from our resources and limits our ability to respond.
The reason this is so critical is that out of fear we lose our ability to reason, and instead act out of fight or flight. And as we know, when decisions are made from this limited level of resourcefulness, we frequently make choices that are not in our best interest.
How do we break this pattern?
1. Raise our level of self-awareness. Take time to reflect on the situation and to discover not only what this means to us, but also to develop our empathy by observing how our actions are impacting others. By stepping back and observing the situation from multiple perspectives, we gain a greater understanding from which to act.
2. Engage our imagination. Reaction versus response is all about a lack of imagination. We fail to consider other options and act as if we have no choice. Furthermore, even when we do stop to consider our choices, we tend to focus on fixing what is broken, rather than creating what is possible. This is an opportunity for us to learn to ask better questions.
3. Filter our choices through both an intellectual and emotional process. By believing we need to act immediately, we often create scenarios that take us far more time to correct. What this means is that we must take time to think through the likely consequences, both positive and negative, of our actions and check the degree of alignment of those outcomes with out purpose and principles.
4. Finally, we need to take action. Paralysis by analysis keeps many mired in the challenge rather than beginning our progressive path toward successful resolution. Even if we are moving in the wrong direction, it is easier to correct course, energetically, than to start from a stand still.