A professional photographer can adjust the angle of their camera when shooting a scene to alter the perspective of the photo. In doing so, they magically tell a different story and change how we feel when someone looks at the final photo.
Just like a photographer, we too can tell a different story about ourselves by changing the angle of our perspective on our own life. To demonstrate this, I’m going to share a practical method that will also help increase our awareness.
By changing perspectives, we bring a whole lot more clarity and focus into our daily lives and to the bigger choices we need to make. We have a limited time on this planet, and we’re all faced with the question, ‘how best to live my life?’
It’s a question that’s connected to our purpose. If we approach this question directly, it’s often difficult to answer because there’s so many ways you can go about it. We simply don’t know where to start and we get lost.
Let’s use our imagination to change our perspective to help get a clearer and a better thought-out answer.
If we begin with where you are right now in your current situation in life. If you were to be asked, ‘How is your life going right now?’, ‘How do you feel about it?’ These questions are easier to answer as we can directly relate to them in the present.
Now let’s imagine you could travel into the future; how do you feel about your current life situation if you were answering it in:
- 6 months
- 1 year
- 5 years
- 20 years
- 50 years
- How about at the end of your life?
Now let’s change our perspective by imagining what it feels like at the end of your life. Imagine reflecting back from that point of view. How would you feel about your current situation in life, if you were looking back at it?
Now, let’s go in the other direction and imagine you could time travel back in time, and answer:
- As a child, what do you think of as the person you’ve now become?
- As a teenager, what would you think of as the person you’ve now become?
- Or what would the person 10 years ago think of the person you are now?
Imagine zooming out and going beyond your own lifetime, try answering the following:
- What kind of legacy are you creating beyond your own life?
- How does your life fit into the whole history of humankind?
- How does it fit into the history of our planet, or the universe?
These questions may stretch your imagination muscles, but it’s a great exercise. You may discover some interesting answers which you may never have thought of before.
Many things which appear to be important to you now, from a different perspective may not have much value.
In my own case, if I imagined myself in my current career, it seemed fine in the present. And when I looked at what I did from my past, it also seemed great as it was something I aspired to do.
But when I projected myself into the future, looking back, it felt as though it didn’t seem to bring enough meaning, and I needed to explore something that would bring more purpose to me personally.
That’s one of the reasons I became interested in the topic of coaching, as it seemed to fit well when looking at it from different angles and perspectives.
Imagine you could take on the viewpoint from a different person, and see yourself as you are:
- What would your parents say about your life?
- What would your partner say?
- What would your children say?
- What would friends say?
- What would the wisest person you know say?
It’s very easy for us to get stuck with our own fixed perspective in our ego. Questions like these can help us break barriers and transcend to see things from a broader view.
You may admire someone as a hero, try to think about what they would say? It’s almost as though you can virtually travel into their consciousness and evaluate how they would think and feel about any situation in which you need an answer to. The aim of this exercise is to create a life that satisfies you from all perspectives. You can also understand if your life decisions are just serving your own benefit or are truly of benefit to others too.
