Perspectives

Dimensions to Make Meaningful Work — People, Time and Place.

This article is a direct result of a “Sparkle Session” between Dan Szuc and Jo Wong in May 2018.

Thinking in absolutes

Our perspectives are influenced by our senses of taste, sight, touch, smell and sound. When we are younger we have a limited perspective of the world as constrained by people, places and experiences around you. Its all too easy to fall into a trap of only observing the world from one perspective or one point of view and there are number of contributors to this.

We may be taught to think in absolutes, limiting the options in front of us, where we only see one dot limiting us from connecting to other dots and where you increase the chances of becoming isolated or numb.

This may even feel like darkness for some.

Perspectives and associated knowledge help us shed light onto situations by recording observations from different topical viewpoints breaking down boundaries that may be stopping us from learning more.

Constant conversations

You are in a constant conversation with yourself to look at topics using multiple perspectives in mind to inform and improve your learning going forward.

We need to encourage continuously learning and to break our egos to help us deal with falsely believing that we have the ultimate truth on anything.

This also helps us grow our perspectives and become more flexible over time to deal with change as it approaches.

Challenge yourself continuously

We also all have biases and assumptions that constrain our view of the world. This is influenced by items like who you are, where you have come from, your cultural background and the limited knowledge available to you at any one time.

Your own world view is influenced by the community you reside in and the people you interact with on a regular basis, perhaps by the media you watch or the books you read.

You need to expand and to grow your perspectives by continuously challenging yourself.

If all those influencing elements are predominantly constraining your thinking, it may well impact your health, decision making, planning and other ways you behave.

Generous amounts of curiosity help us deal with biases and assumptions as they slowly creep into our thinking.

The importance of questioning what you see and to challenge yourself to see a topic from different perspectives, angles or dimensions.

Challenging yourself continuously helps you to be constantly learning more about yourself in relationship to the rest of the world.

Being open & knowing your boundaries

To grow perspectives you need to be aware of your own boundaries and how to occasionally venture out of your own safety zone. Its important to be aware of our own habits, biases and how you think and behave.

If you are indeed open to challenging your observations about the world, you have an opportunity to learn about the many dimensions to anything and anyone.

If you are open to multiple points of view, that means you can constantly learn about the world.

As you learn more about the world it may well open up more doors to opportunities that you may not be seeing right now.

We need to force ourselves to get outside more and move away from the rectangle view of our mobile phones.

Consider:

• When you travelled somewhere new?
• Tasted foods you have not tried before?
• Spoken with a person from a different background?
• Read about a topic that you are are not familiar with?

Not everyone is open to challenging themselves or stepping beyond their own boundaries.

Diversity & practice to gain maturity

Having a diverse set of people, places and conversations around you can help you see topics from different angles and it can help you gain a better clarity of what may or may not be factually relevant or correct.

As you get older you hopefully get more opportunities to get to meet a wider range of people and gain perspectives from their lives.

You get an opportunity to invite people into your world and ask them questions and learn about their points of view, family, education and overall experiences to then go back and question and consider adjusting your world view as it intersects with other people’s world views.

Conversations and discussions implies an exploration of a topic to learn and understand a topic better.

These conversations help us probe for perspectives to grow and mature in reference to our own emotions about the world we live in.

Dimensions to see multiple meanings — people, time & place

You want to be able to to better interpret the conversations so that you can look at a topic using dimensions like people, time and place. For example, time — by changing the dimensions of time, we can also see if there are influencing factors on people and place and see how this changes our perspective about a topic.

Routines to help us practice fundamentals over and over again to gain strength and wisdom over time.

Instead of looking only a topic in light of what is happening presently, one could also look at the topic in reference to the past or look at the topic with an intention of what it could mean for the future or to mix all three together — past, present and future.

It’s nice to be around people who can take a multi dimensional view on topics. People who can be open minded and willing to have a conversation and discussion can say when they “don’t know”.

People who are willing to read or research more if they don’t know something and have goodwill enough to share what they learn along the way to help us gain additional perspective over time.

Tips

So here are some tips to consider to help you to consider “perspectives”:

• Recognise that you have biases and assumptions
• Read range of publications from different places
• Expand your circle of people with different backgrounds
• Travel to different places and have diverse conversations
• Shut down technology occasionally and go for a walk outside to see the world around you.

This all requires daily practice to constantly connect perspectives to make sense of it as you grow your own own sense of perspective and add meaning to your “perspective vault” so that it becomes richer over time.

If you can do this, the better you can connect and make sense of the world around you.

Thank you Jo Wong.

Sparkle Sessions

We are constantly running what we call “Sparkle Sessions” that encourage teach, learn, make, practice, reflect and action moments.

We need #sparkle to:

Seed and Practice to improve Attitudes to Reflect and Knit the capabilities & domains together to Learn & Evolve for better now and futures.

References

1. Learning Is a Learned Behavior. Here’s How to Get Better at It.
2. If you want to stay successful, learn to think like Leonardo da Vinci
3. Why understanding the forces behind social practices could change behaviour
4. Where is reflection in the learning process?
5. Connect the dots and create the “magic inside the intersections”