All About Perspective

Welcome to the Born for Greatness podcast. I am recording outside today because if I could talk, it'd be helpful. It is lovely out here, so you may hear some plains and birds in the background, but it's worth it to me because I need to soak up every second before fall comes and I can no longer enjoyably sit outside. So if you're on YouTube, please enjoy the Greenery. And today we're going to talk about perspective. How do we change our perspective? How do we look at things differently?

Well, it's a great question and one that I have tried to do in the past, but never was successful in it. And I think because it's more than just saying, oh, I'm just going to look at this differently. Because as much as certain people will say you can train your mind to believe whatever you want, I mean, sure, of course you can, but we can't discredit and discount the fact that we're humans and we have real emotions, right? Everyone feels pain and you can pretend that you don't, but the reality is it's still there. And if all you do is push it down, there's going to be problems later on because eventually it will come to the surface. So not dealing with something now and postponing that for later is not benefiting you in any way, shape or form.

So how do you really look at things differently? Well, for me, I needed to understand that I don't see the whole picture. There's a huge big picture and I'm only seeing this tiny little bit in which I'm dealing with right now in my life. But if I saw the entire picture, oh, how things would be different. So I'm going to use the analogy of a puzzle. So you're putting together a puzzle, but you don't have the box that has the picture on it showing you kind of the idea of what the puzzle is supposed to look like. You've got all of your pieces and you have this one piece that looks like it fits in this corner, right? It seems to match all the other pieces and you're busy turning it and turning it and trying to get it to fit with the other pieces, but it just doesn't. Even though it seems like it's supposed to be here, all of the outer signs say it belongs in this corner. So you struggle and you deal with it and you try to fit that piece when that piece was never supposed to fit there. Think about that. If you don't have the whole big picture, you can't see that that piece belongs somewhere else and it fits perfectly. Perfectly. It was meant to be in the other side of the puzzle, not where you're busy trying to shove it in to make something work that was never supposed to work there.

So for me, understanding that what I think should make sense at the time doesn't necessarily make sense in the grand scheme of things. And if I would stop trying to shove that puzzle piece into a place that it does not fit and was never meant to fit, gives me a whole new perspective. And honestly, it gives me freedom in knowing that I don't have to try so hard to make things work that we're never meant to be. That's how I try to look at things and understand that just because I don't see something good coming out of something bad doesn't mean it's not there. There's something very profound that I have learned, and a lot of this is through prayer. And I am a woman of faith. And I have learned that there is purpose for my pain. And I think even if you don't have a faith system or belief in place, you can still understand that there can be purpose for your pain. Because something that you've been through may help someone else down the line. It doesn't matter what it is, but your story could have an impact on somebody else's life, somebody else who is struggling with that same thing that you've been through. You might be the hope that someone needs. You might be the reason someone says, I'm going to give this one more try. And that is perspective of seeing that there is purpose in your pain. Now, I'm not saying it's easy because it's not. Trust me, I know. I'm down here with you. I get it. I'm human. I fail. I struggle with it from time to time. But I'm learning that maybe those scars and the things that happen to me that I think are just the worst and nothing good could come from, maybe those were the launching points to bring me where I am today, or the things that are going to propel me into the future to be successful, to bring true happiness.

I talk about the what ifs. We don't want to live in a world of what ifs, right? Everyone wants certainty. No one wants to not have an idea of what comes next, right? So we have these things in the future that we dread. And for me, I dread getting older like I dread getting older. I am incredibly independent, which is a good and bad thing. But the idea of not being able to function and do the things that I do scares me. The thought that when I reach a certain age, my value may diminish, which isn't true, but these are thoughts that I have. I have spent time dreading. But what if those moments that I'm dreading end up being the very best what if? The what ifs equal hope. To me, it means that any situation I am could be turned around and something good can come from very bad situations. So today I just want to encourage you to change your perspective, to understand that it is okay to have emotions and to feel pain and to sit with it sometimes but after you've sat with it, try to imagine your life as a puzzle and realize this is just one piece of the puzzle. And maybe you'll find out in the end, when that whole puzzle comes together what that one piece represented, what that one piece anchored in your puzzle. So I just encourage you today to have hope, to have a new perspective, to see things in a little bit of a different light, and to remind you that you're born for greatness. So go out and be awesome today, because you are.