Hi,
My name is Spiros and today I have a short talk for you about changing perspective and how useful it can be in our daily life.
I will share with you my personal opinion and I will end up with a powerful technique that I call zooming out which has helped my coaching clients and me so many times.
So for a moment I would like you to imagine the following.
This Monday morning you walk out of your door with a fast pace and you reach your driveway only to find a flat tire at your car.
Obviously you will feel frustrated about the event,
Maybe angry and perhaps stressed because you will be late for work.
Now look at this event from the perspective of the garage owner that you take your car to fix your flat tire.
You bring him work and money of course,
So he sees your flat tire as a good thing.
And perhaps he secretly wishes for people to have troubles with their cars,
Regardless of whether those same people will not wish for the same thing.
The situation remains the same,
You have a flat tire,
But the perspectives and ultimately the person's emotions are different.
So people are not disturbed by things but by the view they take of them,
As Epictetus says.
This is actually my favorite quote from the ancient Stoics,
And the stranger it sounds,
The more true it is.
The benefit of consciously changing our perspective is that we stop being stuck in a close-minded attitude and that is looking at the bad thing that happened to us just from our side.
Now you may think,
How can I not be frustrated when a bad thing happens to me?
Well it's not about not being frustrated and it's definitely not about being in Nirvana the whole time.
If you feel frustrated,
Then by all means,
Be frustrated.
Don't hold it back.
Take your time to express your feelings.
The point though is to not remain stuck inside a monochromatic emotional whirlpool.
And the first step for moving out of this point is to be aware that there are other perspectives completely different from yours on the situation you are in right now.
So if there is a recent situation that frustrated you,
Think about how another person may have viewed your situation.
And to elaborate more,
Let me share with you a story.
An evening not so long ago my son was crying out loud because it was time to go to bed.
I found that cute though and I smiled while I was wondering how could he see the bigger picture.
Was there a way for him to change perspective or to zoom out of his misfortune?
When a toddler is outraged,
Lying on the floor and hitting arms and legs on the ground,
It may seem like the biggest disaster that could happen to the kid at that moment.
But almost magically the child forgets about the situation 10 minutes later.
We appreciate that crying because it's time to go to bed is not really an issue and most probably we have all cried for the same reason.
Now and having seen the bigger picture,
We,
The adults and the parents smile only because we find it cute.
Maybe in a similar way,
God also smiles at our misfortunes.
When we are struggling,
When we are angry,
When we are desperate and depressed.
By the way,
With the word God I don't mean any particular monotheistic God.
I use that word only as something above and outside of human perception.
So perhaps at a higher level,
One that we cannot grasp from our everyday perception,
These are not really calamities or misfortunes.
Sure there are tough periods in our lives that we can definitely feel on our skin and deep inside our minds,
But we categorize them as such only through our personal and temporal way of perceiving them.
And so God,
Who presumably exists in another level,
Smiles at our misfortunes because he finds them cute.
And to come to the zooming out technique that I mentioned in the beginning,
Consider these interesting thought experiments with a picture.
So the other day I was browsing through the photos on my computer and I encountered a beautiful landscape photo.
I wanted to focus on a particular point at the top of a mountain and I zoomed in.
Then I zoomed in some more.
And then some more.
Till I could only see scattered pixels which do not make much sense on their own.
It is only when we zoom out,
When we elevate our point of view,
That we can see what the whole picture represents.
What if we as individuals are the pixels in a picture that we call the universe?
What if we could zoom out and discard any magnifying glass?
And that is our lenses through which we see the world,
Our beliefs,
Our values that we hold for people,
Situations and ourselves.
It seems to me that only then we can see how our individuality merges and collaborates with other beings and entities in the world around us.
So what would be the benefit if we could see our problems from another angle?
What if we could elevate our minds so high that we would see people,
Animals,
Trees,
Rocks,
Events not as separate but as interdependent features of the bigger picture?
Could we categorize humanity's issues and misfortunes then?
Would we smile too?
I hope you enjoyed this short but hopefully thought-provoking talk.
And if you are interested in seeing things from another angle,
Please check out my perspective and detachment meditation.
That is a guided visualization where it helps you on changing perspective so you can detach from fears,
Habits,
Pains and consistent thoughts.
Thank you for listening.
