Let's Catch Up. Perspective, it changes everything.

Reflecting on what rattled my senses last week. It was all about inviting ways to "see" things differently.

At first glance it seemed the house was levitating. I blinked my eyes and looked again, still levitating. The problem was I was driving and the traffic was moving swiftly so I couldn’t take the time for my brain to see it differently, instead my mind was suspended in the thought that house was levitating!

It wasn’t until I crossed the bridge, found a place to turn around so I could come back slowly, (no other cars disturbing my vision), that I noticed of course the house was not levitating, it was being held up by happy humans. Ha! If you know me well you have likely seen or received a happy human that looks like this:

Now, look at that photo of the house again, doesn’t it look like it is being held up by a bunch of happy humans?

Seriously, it’s all about perspective.

"Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall...Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, crisscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere.” Margaret Atwood

For several months I have felt like I’ve been living “with my face squashed up against a wall”. I’ve felt blocked in my writing as I desperately try to work on my book but instead find a thousand different things to spend my time on. Several of my clients have “graduated” my Courage to Change coaching program which has opened space to be filled with new faces but I realize the open space feels scary and unknown. I’m also working on being a new version of myself in relationship, something I teach others to do. It is quite challenging to practice what I preach, but I’m doing it 🧐. Everything just feels so uncertain. Not just my inner world but the big scary outer world too.

I know I don’t have to tell you this, I know you are feeling it too.

A change in Perspective.

When decisions and action are suspended and I feel like I’m hanging out in the waiting room of life, it is a change in scenery that helps me shift perspective. Often a hike in the woods will do it but I was feeling too bugpucky and my daily hikes were not cutting it. Having grown up near the ocean, it's as if my whole being was being pulled to the coast, like a massive magnet. So to the coast I went to replenish myself. I was looking forward to walks along the ocean and salty air saturating my cells.

Here we go!

👃 I entered the little town of Kennebunkport Maine with my windows rolled down and all I could smell were beach roses. In full bloom everywhere the scent was intoxicating and pulled me back to my past. It absolutely delighted me. It’s funny how smells can do that, take you back in time, instantly conjuring up a scene in your head. It provided an immediate change in perspective, an opening. Of course I found a sign for that at my first stop, a coffee shop.

🌊 Sometimes it’s good to put the world on pause in order to ponder the issues in life and creativity. Miles of brisk ocean cleared my head of cobwebs and swept away fixed points of view which helped me focus on what was important. (And yes, I witnessed that spider creating a beautiful stitch to shore up the web!)

🥰 When you feel suspended between states of being and you are challenging accepted norms (comfort zones), maybe even being invited to be a different, better version of you — change your environment, if only for an hour. This change of perspective helps us see things differently, blows open space that invites us to connect with ourselves. It’s a time to ponder…

Do your convictions bind you or free you?

Do they deaden you or animate you?

What are the habits that are holding you back?

If you were twice as strong and twice as confident, what decision would you make?

What are you grateful for in this moment?

What are you not grateful for? Can you be grateful for that also by imagining you no longer have it?

How do you see differently when your world is turned upside down?

How does this change you inside?

What do you gain by questioning your truth?

So many different lines of questioning, you get the idea. Turn things upside down and sideways, look at it from all angles. Shake it up.

👀 👂I’ll leave you with the wisdom of C.S. Lewis.

“For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: It also depends on what sort of person you are.”

Thanks for spending time with me. Did it inspire you to change your perspective?