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Table of contents for Gaining Perspective

1. Gaining Perspective Part 1
2. Gaining Perspective Part 2
3. Gaining Perspective Part 3
4. Gaining Perspective Part 4
5. Gaining Perspective Part 5

When you stop and put things in perspective, though, it can make a big difference. When you work at getting to the core of what your life is all about, you begin to understand that most of those external things you see as necessities are not really necessities at all. Each one of them is merely one way, one way out of many, of expressing a deeper purpose. Even if you did not have your job, even if you could not afford your current lifestyle, you would still be you. You would still have the same driving purpose, and you would most certainly be able to find some other way to express it.

If you’re at the airport waiting to travel to another city and you miss your flight, there will be another flight to eventually take you where you want to go. You may have to experience a little inconvenience, you may have to wait until the next day, you may have to buy another ticket, but you have not forever lost the chance to get where you want to go. It’s important to remember that the flight is not the destination. If you miss the flight you have not lost the destination. There is another way to get there. Even if the airport is closed because of bad weather, you can rent a car and drive to where you want to go. Likewise, your job is not irrevocably tied to your purpose in life. It may be a great way of expressing that purpose, but it is not the only way.

If you feel that you’re working at your job because you have to do it, because you’re somehow forced by fate to be toiling at this particular activity, it can work against you regardless of what happens. With such a negative attitude, when you’re working at the job you resent it and if you were to lose the job you’d be in danger of becoming completely lost.

On the other hand, when you see your job as something you’ve chosen to do, and you understand how you yourself have connected that choice to the things that are truly important to you, it frees you from the resentment. It also frees you from the sense of dependence.

The purpose of your life does not depend on the external things, whatever they may be. It is the other way around. You have connected to those external things precisely because of your purpose, precisely because you have some reason to do so. Those external things are sure to change over time, because that is their nature. But even if you lose them completely, you have not lost your purpose, you have not lost that which is truly important to you. When the day-to-day complexities of life are assaulting you from every direction, it’s important to remember that.

Your perspective plays a vital role in how your life proceeds. Raise your perspective and you raise your effectiveness. Raise your perspective and you improve your ability to live life according to your most treasured values. Raise your perspective, and you’ll find yourself making positive progress in fulfilling those goals and dreams which are truly most important to you.
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Table of contents for Gaining Perspective

1. Gaining Perspective Part 1
2. Gaining Perspective Part 2
3. Gaining Perspective Part 3
4. Gaining Perspective Part 4
5. Gaining Perspective Part 5

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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Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23).

The Bible instructs us to keep our heart with all diligence. Obviously this is not a reference to my blood pumper, but to my subconscious. The reason is that out of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are harbored there, will come my actions, words, and deeds of today and tomorrow.

This is the battleground. My mind is where I will win and lose the game of life, so to speak. It is important therefore, to be careful how I process the experiences of my life. It is very important.

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Table of contents for Gaining Perspective

1. Gaining Perspective Part 1
2. Gaining Perspective Part 2
3. Gaining Perspective Part 3
4. Gaining Perspective Part 4
5. Gaining Perspective Part 5

In the last several decades, at an ever-increasing rate, life has become immensely more fast-paced and complex due to an explosion in the amount of information available to the average person. This information explosion has in numerous ways been responsible for dramatic increases in the quality of life for many people. As with any other powerful tool, though, instant information access is best used when used wisely and in moderation.

Those electronic devices which can bring so much complexity and confusion to your life — phones, computers, pagers, televisions, radios — all have a very powerful feature which unfortunately is not fully appreciated or used by the very people who could benefit most from it. The feature is not at all difficult to learn how to use, and in fact it is accessed by use of a simple button or switch which is common to all those devices. The name of this button is a testament to the real power of this feature, because the button is called the POWER button.

Simply by pressing the POWER button you can activate the enormously powerful feature of turning the devices OFF. Imagine spending two hours with no telephone, no computer, no radio, television, CD or MP3 player, no VCR, no DVD, no wristwatch, no PDA. Consider how it would be to go several hours without the latest update from CNN, without knowing the minute-by-minute movements of the NASDAQ Composite Index.

It’s great to have instant access to so much information. Information can be an extremely powerful tool, something which can be leveraged to enormous benefit. Yet it is certainly possible to get too much of a good thing. The fact is, much of what you know about you cannot do anything about, and that leads to a profound sense of frustration. So there is real value in putting all that information into perspective. In fact, putting it into perspective can transform it from being frustrating and anxiety producing into being more powerful and valuable.

The way to put it into perspective is to give yourself time to process it all, to think about what it means for your life, to consider it in light of your most deeply held values and purposes. And that’s not something you can do while it is streaming in unabated.
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Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline (Proverbs 1:7, NLT).

Today is the 1st of March. Therefore, my reading from Proverbs today is chapter 1. What really struck me was this; Only fools despise wisdom and discipline (emphasis added). Only, that is a fairly exclusive term. I do not want to be a part of that group. But, I clearly see a need in my life for more wisdom as well as more discipline. And sometimes I resist discipline…

Seems that an attitude adjustment is in order. I need to seek after wisdom and embrace discipline. Wow! That is an attitude adjustment.

This is an only that I want no part of whatsoever.

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Table of contents for Gaining Perspective

1. Gaining Perspective Part 1
2. Gaining Perspective Part 2
3. Gaining Perspective Part 3
4. Gaining Perspective Part 4
5. Gaining Perspective Part 5

The complexities of modern life often come at you so quickly that all you can do is react to them, and by so doing you allow them to control you. Yet with enough perspective, there is no need to spend all your energy reacting to what is going on around you, and merely staying even. With enough perspective you can move calmly, confidently and effectively in the direction of your most treasured dreams no matter what happens. By gaining more perspective, you can rise above the frustration of living from one crisis to the next, and put your energy into a life that is genuinely and continually fulfilling.

So how do you gain this valuable perspective? Well, something as useful and valuable as increased perspective requires some effort. There is much to be seen from the top of the mountain, and yet there is a substantial climb required to get there. To gain perspective takes commitment. It’s not something that can be acquired in a shrink-wrapped carton at your local department store. It requires your input and your time and your desire to make it happen. Sending someone else to climb the mountain for you may give you some valuable information, but it cannot compare to the rewards to be gained from climbing the mountain yourself.

An important step in gaining perspective is to cut down the noise level so you get in a position where you can hear yourself think. If you’re like most people, there is always so much activity and confusion swirling around you that almost no space is available for real, extended contemplation. Most of your mental energy gets spent reacting to the fast-paced world in which you’re immersed. That can indeed be thrilling and satisfying to a point, yet eventually it turns up empty. Eventually you get to a place where there simply doesn’t seem to be a point to it all, where you keep doing the same things over and over again without ever moving perceptibly forward.
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“Courage is not limited to the battlefield. The real tests of courage are much quieter. They are the inner tests, like enduring pain when the room is empty or standing alone when you’re misunderstood.” — Charles Swindoll

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure. Never, never, never give up. — Winston Churchill

“Be careful of the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful of the friends you choose for you will become like them.” — W. Clement Stone

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” — Albert Einstein

“The person who would like to make his dreams come true MUST STAY AWAKE.” — Richard Wheeler

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt. — William Shakespeare
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