Why your life won’t change until you change your perspective
You are what you think.
If you are only thinking about problems and sorrows, that’s exactly what are you going to attract in your life. If you change your perspective and start thinking about solutions and opportunities, you are sending vibrations to attract an abundance of them.
Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.
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Off late, I realized that I have accumulated a lot of negativity inside me due to all the things happening in my life from little to big. I was inhaling and exhaling nothing but negativity. People, relationships, personal life, career, routine — everything was toxic and I wasn’t doing anything about it.
One fine evening, I came early from office, made myself some tea and went to the terrace. That was exactly when the major paradigm shift happened. There was this beautiful royal blue BMW on the road and behind it was a white colored Maruti Suzuki — both were waiting for the traffic lights to go green. Then a couple came on a bike. All of a sudden, I noticed a few kids and a one-legged man who were trying to cross the road.
If we look carefully, the story has four characters: BMW, Maruti Suzuki, bike, and a one-legged man. The couple on a bike were seduced by the want of a car. The Maruti car guy was awestruck by the luxe of BMW. Who knows the guy in BMW might be eyeing at some other luxury car. Amidst all this want and longing for a bike, a car, a luxury car, the one-legged man was looking at the kids. One could easily feel the ‘want’ or ‘desire’ in his eyes to just walk with both legs.
In that moment, my personal and professional worries diminished to absolute zero. That day I realized that changing the way we look at things can change our life too. The paradigm shift was so overwhelming that I felt like documenting the incident. I sat down and wrote the following findings in my journal.
Here are some of the highlights:
We (always) have a choice in how we view things
Have you ever looked at unfortunate circumstances in your life and thought you are going through this because you ‘don’t have a choice’? If yes, I beg to differ. Each one of us is having many choices and we are exercising them every day, every minute, and every second.
Let’s break down the various choices you make on a regular day:
Choice#1. You wake up at 6:30 AM so that you can reach office on time.
Choice#2. You take a train to work rather than a bus or a cab.
Choice#3. You take up extra work to prove your competence at work when you are occupied with a lot of work already.
Choice#4. You help your daughter with her homework despite being tired.
Choice#5. You come back home late at night and start working on your dream when you could easily sleep.
While it may not be in our hands to choose whatsoever happens in our life, however, the way we see and react to it can make all the difference. To quote Randy Pausch from The Last Lecture, “You can’t change the cards you’re dealt with, but you can change how you play them.”
You have the choice to be happy or sad, complain or express gratitude, smile or frown, be productive or procrastinate, be a victim or a victor. Just remember that you always have a choice and it begins by changing the way you look at the things happening in your life.
Act than to be acted upon
The best way to change your life is to take ownership and ACT. If you want to change your job, act. If you want to learn the Tango, act. If you want to take that certification, act. If you want to learn the new technology, act. If you want to go brawny from scrawny, act. If you want a hike or an appraisal, act.
If you want anything, act.
Nothing is going to change if you aren’t willing to change yourself. Things aren’t going to change on their own, you have to take ownership of them. Be confident about yourself and take that leap of faith. Be a little proactive rather than being victimized by your situation. Things will automatically start shaping up in a favorable way when you start acting on them. Now, you decide — if you want to act or be acted upon.
Once I get up, the first thing I do is to recite powerful affirmations. I repeat them over and over out loud and end up feeling more empowered. You can use different variations of the following affirmations:
- I choose to control my emotions
- I choose to be happy
- I choose what affects me
- I choose to not be intimidated, overwhelmed, or scared of things/people/circumstances
- I choose to not let failures or negative experiences define me in any form or capacity
- I choose to ACT
Last few words
In the last few months, I’ve realized that it takes a lot of courage, determination, and action to change your perspective. It’s not an overnight process, it takes a good amount of time to recondition your brain and train it to view things in the most strategic and beneficial way.
Here are some questions I will leave you with that might help you take things into perspective:
- What are the things you see yourself doing out of choice?
- What would you have done if given a choice then?
- What is stopping you to make that choice(s)?
- Are there any repercussions for that?
- Have you taken any immediate steps to overcome the problem?
No matter how things might seem, you have a choice — always. Take action to change your thinking, only then you would be able to change your life.
“Want to bring a positive change in your worklife this year? Stop relying on emails and switch to ProofHub!”
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Vartika Kashyap runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016 & 2017. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.
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