CONSCIOUS LIFE SKILLS NEWSLETTER - February 2007
One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
CHANGING YOUR PERSPECTIVES CAN CHANGE THE WORLD!
by William V. Whitaker
Have you argued you were right, only to find out later on, you were in fact, wrong?
Why did you take that stance? What make you feel you were right? And what made your revise your stance? Did you access some new information?
Whatever it was, you changed your perspective!
Your belief system was challenged and with the extra information and perhaps hindsight you gathered, you changed your perspective.
Have you heard the saying: "Before you criticise and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes!" If you think about it, isn't that asking you to change your perspective on what is causing the other person to act as they do? To understand someone else's motivation, you need to try and answer two questions - 1. What is that person afraid of? 2. What are they compensating for?
Honestly try and reflect on what you think may cause them to act this way. Are they afraid of losing your love and respect? Do they want your attention and are they acting out in way to compensate for the lack of it? When you come to a sense of what motivates the other, try and adjust your perception by showing compassion and being open to the possibility that, whatever they did, it was not necessarily personally directed at you, but is rather a reflection of their inner struggle with the meaning of life and their perceptions.
Learning to appreciate another's motivation behind their actions doesn't mean you have to take on the responsibility to change them. That is their responsibility. You cannot change another, you can only change yourself! You can state your truth and set boundaries, or ask for certain standards to be met. If those are not met, then you have a choice of holding that perspective and belief and probably carrying the anger that goes with that decision.
That anger could end up manifesting painfully within you, not in the other! You will be the one more likely to suffer from migraine headaches, upset stomach or high blood pressure. Truly, the only resolution is for you to change yourself - your thinking, your perspectives. How else will you adjust the basic blocks to clear thinking?
You can make a difference in the world by changing your perspective! When you do this in a way that enhances your inner peace and harmony, your vibrational energy also changes. Others will notice this change and react and respond differently to you. When they do so, they are then changing themselves. Change yourself by changing your perspective. Changing your perspective is how you make a change in the world!
Perspective is understood to be an individual's view of the world. It's your particular way of regarding a situation or a topic and may be called your position or stance.The process through which you actually arrived at this is called learning, either rightly or wrongly.
Perception is the process or act of perceiving. You live your whole life responding and reacting by combining and weaving pieces of information in the form of beliefs and feelings about your human experience, that help you give meaning when in a situation or airing an opinion about a topic.
Your intial perception, right or wrong, is built on many things - for example, your education, your parents' values, your experiences in the schoolyard, your intimate relationships, and your culture. All of these play a part in feeding into, and shaping your individual view of the world.
Two people can see the same incident in the street and have a completely different version about who committed what in the act. Why do you think that is? The differences in their life experiences have coloured their perspectives, causing them to remember different things as significant.