What is True Perspective?

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Maybe you haven’t thought about this before, but what is true perspective? And how can this have a negative impact on how we live our lives?  Well this blog is going to help you understand this, because if you’re are suffering from anxiety or confidence issues this is something that will help you.

Perspective, I believe, is a totally personal thing and everyone has their own unique experience of the world through their conscious and unconscious connections.  You might be thinking how can this be? We are all living in the same world, so if we have the same experience then isn’t it the same. This is not the case, due to our own unique perspective on things, we all focus on different aspects of the same experience.

If you imagine ten different people went into the woods, they would all see the woods from a different perspective. The botanist would notice different types of trees and flowers, the person who enjoys bird watching will hear the call of different birds and spot the different species.  The children would see the places to hide and run too and not notice much else, a blind person would be aware of how sweet the birds sound and the simple sounds of stillness which comes when they’re not singing.  The dog walker would find nice sticks to throw for their dog, a seasoned walker would be pacing through the forest and notice the incline and the terrane of the woods. The mum would notice the big muddy puddles and anything that could be dangerous for her children, the hunter would notice the marks and tracks in the ground from the animals in the woods. I would notice the sun, how it can shine through the trees leaving shards of bright light and the sounds of nature all around me, plus that fresh smell of nature. So, what would you see?

How you see the world is different to everyone else. Take the time to see other people’s perceptions of their world.

As you can see who we are, what we like and focus on is what we see all around as this is what we are consciously and unconsciously looking for. There is just so much to take in, so our mind is constantly helping us to narrow down our view to what it thinks we like to see and what will help us keep safe. We don’t only do this with our conscious mind, our unconscious mind is 90% of our mind capacity and its drive to do this is in turn much bigger, which can cause issues for us.

Let’s think about the mother, if say her children are young and it’s the first time out into the forest her instincts will be super alert, she will be over aware of her environment and constantly checking the safety of her children. The family enjoy the trip out to the woods and go again, this continues until the family are going every weekend. Will the mum be at the same hyper alert level now? The answer is no, she will still be alert but nowhere near to the level she was on her first few visits. But can this be different? Yes, if the week before one of her children hurt themselves, then she will have reverted back to the hyper-vigilant role of the mother. This could of course, if negatively triggered become the normal pattern and the relaxed walk becomes an anxious worried experience. As you can see experiences shape our view of the world and as we are all have different experiences, we are all creating our own unique view of what we see around us.

Negative experiences can breed the fear of negative things happening again. Don’t let your mind control you focus live in the moment

Here’s another example of how we can change our focus on things, say if you have ever been thinking about buying a new car, or you have a new car, or you have met someone new in your life who has a certain type of car.  You may have noticed you start to see this type of car everywhere, while driving, parked cars, passing cars, adverts, even car showrooms.  After a while it seems that there is lots more of these cars on the road, if you have experienced this you may be smiling now to yourself thinking hell yes.  You may have thought I had no idea there was this many cars in this model and even colour.  So, what has changed, is there more of that particular type of car on the road? No there’s not, but what has changed is that due to your change of connection to that particular type of car and your mind has noticed them more easily. Your mind is constantly looking for patterns and repetition of situations, when it finds them it starts to automate the process for you. I am sure you have all heard the saying ‘creatures of habit’, we are just that. Habit is something our minds craves.  If you have read The Cave Man you will already be aware that it is due to the issues of safety and security, if something has changed or is different, it could mean we are no longer safe. Due to this need for safety and security and rightly so, as it has kept us alive for millions of years, our mind is always craving habits, as repetition of something means safety.

We’re all creatures of habit, learn new and positive habits to enhance your life and live anxiety free.

Getting back to the car scenario, you are aware that you see more of those cars but what else does that mean? Yes, right if we are seeing a greater proportion of one car then we’re not seeing so many of the other cars which are of course still there. We have changed our perception and maybe not even fully realised we have done this. We are seeing more of one type and this can mean that we don’t notice other things because of it and also the things we focus on can seem much bigger than they looked before. For this car situation it makes relatively no difference to us if this is happening, but this is not just happening in this situation its happening in everything we do.

We can blow things out of proportion. Take the time to step back and see the bigger picture.

How distorted is our reality of the world? What things are blown out of portion? What things can we just not see because of it? I am going to leave you with these questions to ponder on and next week we will continue looking at our perception and the bigger impact it has on our anxiety and confidence issues.  I will also be giving you, ideas on how to help change these misconceptions in your life and take that next step to become anxiety free.

Each step is another step closer to becoming anxiety free. You can do it take another step today.

Thanks for dropping by Sara x