To gain perspective, get away from the noise and confusion and put yourself in a place where you can hear yourself think, a place where you can spend some quality time and some quantity of time on contemplation. Then turn your thinking to those things that are truly important to you.

You often identify yourself with your job, your age, the community in which you live, the church you attend, the school your child goes to, and other external factors. Yet all these things are not really who you are. They are expressions of who you are. To gain perspective is to understand why you have chosen to live your life in the way you are living it. To gain perspective is to get in touch with the deep, driving purposes which compel you to make the decisions you make. Those are the kinds of things you simply can’t explore when every 30 seconds of your day is rigidly scheduled, when the problems and questions and challenges and tasks are coming at you from all directions. When you do get into a place where you can explore them, such an exercise can add valuable perspective to all you do.

Think about your life and all the good things you have going for you. Certainly you have difficulties. Everyone does. Yet those difficulties, as serious as they may be, are really just aberrations in the overwhelmingly positive and abundant experience of being alive. The fact that you’re able to even recognize them as difficulties means that you must have a positive, abundant background against which to compare them. So set aside the difficulties and focus on appreciating the good and positive things that are too often taken for granted. Consider your family, your faith, your awareness and ability to make things happen, the beauty of the world around you and the opportunities you have to experience it.

Look for the reasons behind the reasons. There is some reason for everything you have chosen to do or to be, and behind that reason is another reason, and a whole string of reasons reaching to your very core. Why do you like to drive your convertible on a sunny day, and what is the why behind that why? Dig deeply enough and you’ll connect with your most treasured purposes.

By so doing, you enable yourself to make some sense of all the confusion and to give a positive, enduring direction to all your efforts. The more deeply you delve into who you are, the more elevated your perspective becomes. Because you begin to understand that all the superficial things, the things which fill life with confusion, anxiety and complexity, are ultimately not all that important. Certainly they are often useful and desirable, but they are not essential. When you realize that you can detach yourself from them, when you understand that you don’t absolutely need all those superficial things, when you stop worrying so much about them, then you can rise above them and see beyond them.

By taking some time to get away from the noise, and using that time to raise your perspective, then when you go back the noise doesn’t seem so noisy, overwhelming or intrusive. You’ll find that you’re able to think and act at a level where you can see your way forward and then make your way forward. You’re giving yourself a lifeboat in which to stand and see over the waves so you’ll know which way to swim in order to get where you want to go.

By gaining perspective on your life you can replace those things you feel you have to do with the things you want to do, with the things you choose to do. Often the activities themselves don’t change. What changes is your relationship to them and your attitude toward them.

As an example, let’s look at the activity of earning a living. Even if you have the best job in the world and are well paid for it, there will be times when you’ll resent having to do it. And if your job and your pay are not so great, then there is even more likelihood for resentment. On top of that, you can feel locked in and trapped by your job because it supports the lifestyle you are living. The money you are earning goes to pay for all those things you see yourself as needing. Eventually you may grow to resent your own lifestyle because it keeps you locked into a job which you resent.

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