Category Archives: Perspective

The Map of Possibilities

Posted on

There’s a wonderful, simple map of possibilities, and it looks like this:

Diagram of magic map

I love it because it looks like our comfort zones are like islands, and the magic is offshore, in a place where perhaps we can’t see land, and we don’t know what’s next. (I may be a bit of a romantic.)

How do we do it? How do we step out of the boundaries of our little havens, off the firm island into the watery realm? First, we need a boat, or just a bit of imagination.

Imagine yourself floating quietly, absorbing each moment as it enters your consciousness and echoes deep inside you, subtly changing the shoreline of your mind. And imagine hoisting the sails and gliding through the unknown, adjusting and adapting as moments crest and fall. You can achieve whatever you are called on to do—or to be.

Next, it takes motivation, courage, perspective, and support to leave the safety of the harbor.

What Motivates You?

Motivation is the force that pulls you out of your comfort zone when you want or need something beyond the familiar boundaries of your current life.

For example, the first trip I took to Europe, I was alone and I didn’t speak Italian. My companions were a phrasebook, an independent spirit, and the absolute commitment to experiencing something new. What motivated me? I knew that underneath all the surface obstacles, would be the chance to see the world with new eyes. And by new eyes, I don’t just mean the vision of someone changed by her experiences; I also mean the way we look at the world as children, when it’s all new, and full of discoveries: eyes filled with wonder.

Ponte Vecchio

And I did just that. I walked along the Ponte Vecchio, saw the statue of David, and looked out of the paned windows of the Uffizi at the Arno as the sun lowered in the sky. I leaned on the wide stone windowsill of an old Tuscan villa and watched the misted hills rolling green and soft in the golden sunrise. It was absolutely wonderful!

Michelangelo's statue of David

What do you really want? (Not what you are “supposed” to want, what you truly want in the secret places of your soul.)

What calls to you?

Take a moment, and be with this question. Notice what comes up.

What Gives You Courage?

Many times, we know what we want, but we talk ourselves out of it, because it seems like there are too many obstacles—the first being facing our own fears of stepping outside of the known, into the possible. You call on your own courage when, despite your worst fears, you step out of your comfort zone anyway.

And remember, at the edges of fear, there’s excitement!

On another trip, I had to take a vaporetto from my Venice hotel to Marco Polo Airport for an early morning departure. It was still night when I stepped out of the hotel onto the cobbled street, and walked to the end of the calle where the black water of the canal lapped against the old stones.

Venice at night

I was alone on a dark, deserted street in Venice, in the middle of the night. I was also unsure whether the water taxi would even show up. Yet it is one of my most exquisite memories.

The sky was clear, with a nearly full moon. The white stones of a nearby building glowed in the moonlight.

It was quiet. Nothing moved but a slight breeze. No footfalls or voices echoed in the maze of stone. I felt like I was the only person awake at that moment in the city.

Eventually, a vaporetto pulled up. I was the only passenger. We sped through the Grand Canal, passing the illuminated old buildings under a moonlit sky, and I arrived at the airport in time.

Venice canal at night with moon

What if I hadn’t the courage to take that trip? All that wonder, and beauty, would exist out in the world, but not in my own experience.

What gives you courage?

When have you mustered the strength to do something that felt a little—or a lot—scary to you? What helped you to call on your natural courage when you needed it?

Celebrate that you did it. It matters.

How Can Your Perspective Help You?

Perspective is where experience and the mind meet, informed by the spirit. You can choose the perspective that the world is magical and beautiful, and you belong here. You can believe that you are meant to grow and experience and expand. You can feel that your life is deeply meaningful, and that you have a calling.

Why? Because choosing those perspectives allows you to see through the limitations of negativity, to experience the connectedness of things, the meaning of events, and the beauty of being here.

(You can choose a more dour perspective, if you wish, but all that gets you is stuckness, and the same experience, over and over. It’s up to you to choose how you want to live your life.)

For example, if you’re somewhere new and you don’t know the language, you can’t just walk into a store and ask for what you need. You have to stop and think about it, look it up in a phrasebook, speak it phonetically, and hope the sales clerk understands what you mean.

Dress in Paris shop

There’s a barrier, and to step through it, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable, feel frustrated, and even look ridiculous. (The time I pantomimed cleaning my ears with a Q-Tip in a Paris drugstore teased a small smile out of the formal, polite sales woman. Only after I did it, did I wonder if twirling your finger near your ear was an international symbol for “crazy.”)

I could have looked at that kind of barrier as a huge problem, “one more thing” that made international travel more of a chore than fun. But I never did. It was an exciting experience to me, because it was new. It required me to think on my feet, be open, and take risks. And that is the perspective that supports me when I’m trying to make my way through unfamiliar terrain.

What is your perspective on all the possibilities awaiting you?

Are you scared? Bitter? Frustrated? Helpless? Excited? How about simply being curious? How does that change anything for you?

What Support Do You Have?

The support available to us is as wide as the horizon: part ourselves, part others, part universe. I’ve found that most people want to be helpful, and surprising coincidences seem to conspire to support me, when I take responsibility for my part, step out of my comfort zone, and keep my perspective open to possibilities.

What support do you have for stepping out of the familiar and growing into the next phase of your life?

School? Family? Friends? How can you get the support you need?

And here’s the wonderful miracle of it all: when you move out of your comfort zone, you expand your comfort zone. Your inner and outer worlds grow bigger. You realize you have more room to experience your precious life, and your confidence in yourself grounds you in that expanded life. You can do it.

What do you want? How are you going to show up in your own life, in a way that you step outside of your old habits and into the embrace of the true magic of the world? And when will you do it?

You can start your journey now.

Translating Elephants into Art

Posted on

Sensitivity is a gift. Highly sensitive people possess the fine tuning to be keenly aware of subtleties in their physical and emotional environments. We’re extra sensitive to smells, sounds, even light. It’s important to us that our environments are not just functional, but beautiful.

Wallpaper print with multi-colored elephants

We intuit connections between things, and feel others’ emotions so keenly, that we are often quite conscious of what’s going on underneath the surface.

But when we see the elephant in the room and point it out, we learn quickly that it makes some people uncomfortable. So it can be pretty frustrating when others want to talk about things like road construction, while one person in the room is secretly angry with another, someone else is feeling hurt, and we see deeper connections in the interaction everyone is having.

What do you do with that kind of complex perception?

Maybe, after a while, you clam up. You stop bothering. You sit there, bored out of your mind, or filled with anxiety from the emotions you’re picking up, knowing that if you try to address what you see, the other people in the room would either look at you like you were crazy, or get angry that you described the elephant at all.

But all that does is drain your energy and hide your wisdom.

Being highly sensitive is really like speaking a different language. And part of the beauty of high sensitivity is that it can be translated through artistic expression: writing, photography, composing, painting, acting—any kind of self-expression that translates your complex experience into something others can experience in their own way.

Let the wisdom of your sensitivity infuse your life—and art.

Woman standing holding flowers

Your sensitivity may help you beautify the environment for yourself and others. It may compel you to write about highly-charged topics in your mission to tell the truth, however uncomfortable. Your sensitivity may flow from your fingertips to into a painting that moves someone to tears.

In whatever way you are meant to, express your vision for the rest of us.

We not only want it, we need what you have to share with us.

Being Stuck is Just a Pause in Your Journey

Posted on

Woman standing and pushing against wall

Being stuck can be difficult to deal with. I often think I “should” be able to keep moving through sheer will. But that is not only exhausting; it distracts me from what I could learn in a situation that is uncomfortable for me.

Last weekend, I watched the wonderful film The African Queen again. It’s a classic hero and heroine’s journey, set in Africa in World War I. Through a series of events, Charlie and Rose find themselves on Charlie’s boat, the African Queen, on a mission to sink a German gunboat on Lake Albert.

If you look at the story metaphorically, Rose represents our higher selves—our inner wisdom—that not only knows what to do, but is an inner catalyst calling us to make the journey we must make.

As in any hero’s journey, Charlie initially refuses the call. He’s like the part of ourselves that thinks of a dozen reasons why something “can’t work.” Yet each step of the way, Rose is there guiding him, helping him see possibilities, and most importantly, teaching him how to believe in himself again. He keeps pushing through his own doubts, moving toward the goal. Pushing through your own resistance builds resilience.

After struggling and failing to free the boat from a muddy marsh in the Bora River (which flows into Lake Albert), Charlie tells Rose he must be honest with her: they’re stuck. At this point, Charlie and Rose believe they have failed in their mission. But a bird’s-eye view reveals that the lake is just beyond the marsh. They are so close, but they can’t see it. Accepting where you are does not mean accepting you have to stay stuck forever. It simply helps free up your mental and emotional energy to rise up over the “mud” and view the possibilities available to you.

Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.
— Rumi

And it’s true. When you stop struggling, you are no longer focusing on what’s not working, but opening up a door for what will work.

While Charlie and Rose sleep on the boat, rain falls into the Bora River until the water lifts the boat out of the mud, over the marsh, and into the lake. They’re free from the muddy marsh, able to continue on their mission. Don’t forget providence. Don’t forget allies. And don’t forget how strong you really are.

Sailboat on water

When you’re feeling stuck, remember it’s just a pause in your journey.

Be curious about what a “bird’s eye view” can reveal about your situation.

Don’t Go Back to Sleep

Posted on

What does this portion of a thirteenth century Rumi poem tell us about living a conscious, authentic life?

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Red arch with blue sky

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. We can wake up to our inner wisdom the way we wake from a dream to this world. But just like remembering a dream, we have to hold it in our consciousness.

Don’t go back to sleep. Stay conscious; don’t forget what the wiser part of you knows.

Many times I’ve experienced an insight, only to have it fade and slip away. Sometimes, a lost insight returns some time later, and although it’s not new, it feels like I’m experiencing the insight on a deeper level.

Write down your insights. Write down your dreams. Go back and look at them. They’re stepping stones to your growth.

You must ask for what you really want. Fully participate in life. Have the courage to feel vulnerable, be honest, and take action to live your life authentically.

What do you want? Sometimes, how you describe what you want is really the result of something else. For example, if you want to feel fulfilled, that feeling is the direct result of living in alignment with your values, with who you are. And that takes action.

The clearer you are about what you value and how you want to live, the easier it is to find the path you need to take.

Don’t go back to sleep. It’s tempting to slip back into a status quo life. It’s familiar, and it seems safer. But the cost is sleepwalking through your life. Stay awake!

What you want is the result of how you live your life, every day. What changes do you need to make to have the life you want?

People are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. We can go back and forth between an old view that no longer matches who we are, or an expanded perspective gained through looking deeper. It’s our choice.

An expanded view is not only possible, it’s necessary to change your life, to take next steps.

The door is round and open. You can step through the open door from your fears to a place of possibilities. It takes courage, support, and ultimately, a commitment to yourself.

Don’t go back to sleep.

Changing Your Perspective

Posted on

There are many ways to describe this experience of life we’re having. But whether the experience feels rich and full—or hollow—depends on our perspectives. And our perspectives depend not just on what we say we believe, but on where we focus our awareness.

Opening your awareness of the world around you deepens your experience, and allows you to see things from a new perspective.

When I was in early grade school, something happened one day that I couldn’t let go of. I can’t remember now what it was—probably someone said something that hurt my feelings or I had been embarrassed in some way.

When I came home, I went out back and sat on the center of the metal teeter-totter to think about it. I knew that it was taking up too much of my attention, but I kept going over it in my head. So I imagined looking down on myself from above. I “saw” myself on the seat of the teeter-totter in the middle of the back yard. From that perspective, I looked so much smaller, and the world seemed so much bigger. What I was worried about was tiny when compared to the vastness of the world; I let it go.

That experience helped me learn that I could manage my own anxiety. By shifting my awareness, I could change my perspective and how I experienced events. I was, and am, deeply sensitive. Learning how to discern what really mattered to me and what was trivial allowed me to stay true to myself in many ways.

I believe that we are—and everything is—connected. We can’t always detect these connections directly, but when we are open and aware, we find meaning in them. And when we sense, or feel, or intuit, some meaning in an experience, or in multiple random experiences, it deepens our experience of life.

If you pay attention to your inner voice and your life experiences, you can see meaningful connections in outwardly unrelated events.

One of my favorite experiences of synchronicity happened in Paris. I went to the Louvre early one day in October. On my way to see the Mona Lisa, I walked down a great hall filled with paintings. Although I was trying to hurry to see the Mona Lisa before the Louvre filled with people, my gaze was drawn to Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 1490 Portrait of an Old Man and a Boy, and I stopped.

Portrait of an Old Man and a Boy by Domenico Ghirlandaio

Portrait of an Old Man
and a Boy
by Domenico Ghirlandaio

I didn’t understand why, but I had the strong feeling that I needed to pay attention to it. I looked at the painting for a while. The old man in the painting had a condition known as rhinophyma, causing his nose to appear large, bulbous, and ruddy. His image, and the kindness in his eyes, stood out to me.

After I left the Louvre, I walked to the Gibert Jeune bookstore. When I left the store, I found a 2 Euro coin on the street. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

I continued down Place Saint-Michel and passed an old man standing by an iron fence playing La Vie en Rose on the accordion. He seemed like a figure from the past. Passersby had tossed coins into a bowl beside his beat-up instrument case. Like the old man in Ghirlandaio’s painting, he had rhinophyma. For a moment, I felt like I was looking at the same man in the painting. It gave me the sensation that we are eternal, and our souls repeat lives like patterns over and over again.

But more profoundly, I realized why I had found the 2 Euro coin: I felt that it was meant for the old musician, and I, as part of the flow, was meant to bring it to him, the way a wave tosses a shell on the beach. It felt both profound and natural. And it connected a series of random events—looking at a painting, finding a coin, and seeing a street musician, in a way that felt meaningful to me.

So I turned around, went back to the old man, and put the coin in the bowl. He smiled and said “Merci, mademoiselle,” and kept playing. I walked away knowing I had experienced something special. The deep connection of these outwardly unrelated events was simply kindness: the kindness that spoke to me from the old man’s eyes in the painting, and the kindness of dropping the 2 Euro coin in the musician’s bowl.

Our experiences are full of meaning; they are made of meaning. We just have to open our awareness to see it.

When you open your awareness, what do you see?

How does your perspective change?