A New Point of View Serves You
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A new point of view just might be the medicine you need. Breaking comfort zones drives thriving. Not only can placing oneself into a new perspective educate or teach new skills, it offers a broadening of thoughts and therefore reactions, or lack of them in terms of judgments about others, as well assumptions. I think the core of livelihood is facing the brink of the newness of things, only to watch that we have the guts to master some.
We’re all caught in systems that keep us regulated. We brush our teeth twice a day or make sure we were underwear (overrated if you ask me, although you didn’t). Many seek jobs that seemingly come with a guarantee of being there for us through the long haul, only to fail at peak performance or right before retirement. I see a lot of relationships fail due to monotony or the disconnect between a partner attempting a new way of being or doing. People are creatures of comforts, and I don’t disagree entirely with routine. I love the regularity of intimacy, baths, massages, stroking cuddly kittens, nearly anything seaworthy or devouring coffee ice cream. I equally love being caught off guard, going for broke in a new country, or trying an outfit that you’d never normally catch me Monday through Friday.
Things are looking up if you let them be so. I remember spending a lot of time as a kid upside down. I still yearn for hours I could spend lolling with my feet reaching to the sky and my hair trailing the ground, or in the middle of the air like a bat dangling! The idea is that right-side up took on a whole new meaning after kidding around with the earth as my ceiling reversed to the normal sky. Mainly it would leave me sensing things more closely. I noticed differences in the air, the areas around me, and what filled them — furniture, people, music, thunderstorms, animals, and so on. This is a wisdom of context, whose DNA gushes lifeblood. The more you’re courageous in change and adaptability, the more relaxed and easy-going all of life may be for you.
My newest point of view is tumbling through new dreams. I usually have to pee in the middle of the night or wee morning hours at least once. While slithering through some wild land of quart-crystallized ancient monuments the size of Redwoods, inscribed with a language that tilts its curves akin to the beauty of Sanskrit, yet is fully unknown, I want to keep resting, but am catapulted to the porcelain bowl instead. I’ve not (yet) mastered the lucid dreaming of picking up where I left off when dancing through a good dream, but I can wade in the waters of horizontal slumber for a long time. The point of this view is the cushion of creativity it affords me during awake time. I actually feel myself pulled into spaces between reality and dreaming and it sorts itself into a more colorful concept about imagineering. It’s also super for pulling me out of a funk, as I remember an unreal exploit my soul journeyed while catching zzz’s. For a rumination junkie dreaming is point-of-view gold. Dreaming views give endless options to the playlist of what could be. The mind is a fascinating functionality to enrich your point of view.
Punctuating your life with a new view landscape moreover breathes better manners. A fascinating find for me on new perspectives has always been support groups. I’ve spoken highly and often about this prior, but I’m reinforcing again. Listening to the stories of my human peers puts me in my place, edges me higher, grounds me into goodness, or rights my leanings towards judgment. From free 12-step or women’s circles to snug life coaching life-calling programs and large gatherings, I’ve located new views way beyond my existing state of mind. All transformed my view into a more keen echelon. New points of view are empowerment cherries on life’s icing on the soul cake of existence. Yeah, that’s just the way my brain works. (Always thinking through food, ha!)
I personally nudge you to launch a massive timeline chock full of new points of view. Take out of the box to Contact, Inception, Matrix, Midnight in Paris, Tron, What Dreams May Come, and The Wizard of Oz levels (or Mad Lib some of your most far-fetched films). Change your thoughts and let them provide encounters with new people. Change your scenery and watch new thoughts and new people you’ll sigh or pine for perchance. Change your path and delight what the new panorama shows. Maybe you’ll find an epic street taco dive bar or discover an entirely more passionate career option. There’s a landmine, as in mining the lands of our planet, for endless prospects I think are far richer and wildly more sustainable than oil!
Be the adventure and not merely seek it. Wind a path through something terribly new to you today, tomorrow, or soon. Catch yourself making a plan, or reaching out into unchartered waters. Dare to darn boxing gloves and get your bum blasted to ring mat. Seek a library card and get lost in the section about insect sex. Book a room at a nice hotel in your area or not too far from your home base. Volunteer for a shelter or soup kitchen. Take the scenic country route instead of the highway, or merely go left and not right when robotically heading home. Sign up for surfing lessons, even if you’re afraid of the water. A sidebar that a beloved one to read and listen to for me is Tim Ferris, who addresses this very water fear in a motivating TED Radio Hour podcast about your Comfort Zone, which I highly recommend.
And don’t forget to make eye contact with all the incredible faces that cross your path. Every single one of us is a rare point of view all in a moveable package. Submit yourself to friends you wouldn’t usually dine with for a night out. Suggest a movie screening with that co-worker with whom you’ve barely ever chatted. Commit to the marathon, even if your closet full of heels hasn’t left room for trainers. Some of the darkest, tiniest, and ill-looking alleyways have produced priceless graffiti street artists I follow around the world now, or afforded me a best Italian penne arrabbiata than I’ve ever tasted. Go out on a limb to contact people for expertise, advice, and support. Try all levels and personalities, from those you know, acquaintances and colleagues, to people you look up to and never thought you could reach out to for a conversation or meeting.
Take in the birds, the tippy tops of buildings, the actual signs and the ones that you may have missed by always staring at your phone or your feet. But do look both ways before crossing the street, please. Basically, turn up the dial of viewing life in all its colors. Look up more often. Look out for new things more often. Make a list of words and items that scare or bewilder you, or paralyze you with fear. Then challenge yourself to cross at least one off the list this year, every month, or by your next birthday.
Entrance your nervous system with the confrontations of spontaneity. Even if you only teeter towards a new route, friend, meal, job, activity, or mental mode of thinking, you’ll likely be grateful in your future when the time comes to make a leap recalling that you were close and now the steps to take the full dive are small in comparison.
Reel in the new reality you can create for your evolution with a new point of view.
