Perspective is power

The way you view something can change everything.

Take the moon, for example. When you look at it with the naked eye, you see it in all of its glory. The dark craters on its exterior. The soft glow gently hugging its edges. The way the clouds wisp around in the soft light.

You bask in its beauty and enjoy it so much that you just need to take a picture. So, you whip out your phone, hold it up to the sky, and snap away. But when you look back at it minutes or hours or days later, the magic is gone. It’s just a white dot in the dark sky. Uneventful. Boring.

What changed? Your perspective. In a very literal sense.

Shaping your perspective

Simply put, your perspective is how you view the world around you. There are countless ways to view and think about any given situation, and each of us takes a different approach to it.

Imagine two people are given the same, pretty difficult task at work. One person may immediately think, “Great, another thing to add to the list. And better yet, I don’t even know how the hell I’m supposed to do this.” And the other (with a similar workload) may think, “This seems tough, but my boss knows I can handle it, and this is my opportunity to prove that I can deliver.”

Same situations. Two entirely different mindsets. But why?

I wish I could give you a simple answer, but like most things, it’s complicated. But there are a few different theories as to what shapes our individual perspectives:

1. The Social Learning Theory suggests that we develop our perspectives by observing and modeling after others, namely our parents, our peers, and our significant others. You know, the whole idea of “you become who you surround yourself with.”
2. The Cognitive Development Theory hones in how our thoughts and thought processes influence how we perceive things. As our brains mature, we are able to understand multiple points of view, which allows us to look at one situation in multiple ways.
3. Our lived experiences also play a huge role in shaping our perspectives. If we experience unresolved trauma, it can skew our perspectives to be more negative. On the flip side, if we generally have a positive experiences, we tend to have a more positive viewpoint of situations.
4. Cognitive biases also play a role in this. Basically, our brain recognizes patterns in the world and tries to connect situations it comes in contact with to those patterns. We tend to search for things to prove ourselves right instead of actually looking at the evidence at hand. (This isn’t always a great thing.)
5. Groupthink impacts our perspectives probably more than we’d like to admit. Think of it as getting a group of people together and them all believing the same thought or idea simply because they are in a room together, which happens more than you think.

It’s a lot to take into consideration, but knowing how our perspectives came to be can help us notice how we are thinking about things. After all, the first step in changing behavior is noticing it.

Find the magic

Now, let’s apply this shift in perspective onto something I’m sure we’ve all dealt with—having a no-good, very bad day. You know, those days when one thing just seems to go wrong after another? You can’t catch a break. Everything is going wrong. How does it always seem to happen that way?

Maybe it isn’t actually happening that way.

Maybe the same amount of “bad” things are happening, but because you’re already looking for the bad, you’re finding it more easily. Think about it. Is it really such a big deal that you just dropped your pen or does it just feel like a big deal because you spilled coffee on your lap 10 minutes ago.

Maybe the only thing that is different from this “bad day” compared to other days is that you’re actually searching for the bad. You’re grasping onto it as soon as it shows a little spark and shining the brightest light possible on it instead of seeing it for what it really is—not a big deal.

So how to we shift our perspective? It’s as easy as asking yourself one simple question: Am I seeing the magic in this moment?

This one little question has been enough for me to snap out of my negative view on multiple instances and completely change my mind (and my mood).

A prime example of this was when my daughter was an itty, bitty newborn. It was one of those middle-of-the-night-who-am-I-what-day-is-it-what-is-going-on feedings and I was completely spent. I stared at her little face and just kept thinking, “Why don’t you sleep?” I felt totally hopeless.

Until I asked myself, “What is the magic in this moment?”

Mind you, from the outside looking in there was nothing magical about bags under my eyes, puke in my hair and on my clothes, and an impending blowout, but I still tried to find it.

And that’s when it came to me. This. Spending this fleeting time with my baby snuggled in my arms.

In retrospect, that really hits the nail on the head. My now two year old is fiercely independent and rarely wants me to snuggle her, so I would give anything for those tiny little newborn snuggles again.

So, next time you find yourself barreling down the path of loom and gloom in your mind, just ask yourself, “What is the magic in this moment?” It may seem silly and downright impossible, but even if the magic is that the moment is almost over, then that is all you need to shift your perspective.

With practice, it will come naturally and you will no longer have to search for the magic (most of the time). It will just come. And how beautiful would it be to live every day of your life soaking in all the world’s magic?

I’m trying to get there, and I hope you are, too.