Have you ever learned something new that changed how you looked at life?
I used to have a tendency to come up with all the reasons something would go wrong:
Why “He’ll probably never call me back.”
Why “That project’s gonna fail.”
Why “My idea will never work.”
Until one day, my best friend asked me,
“Why do you always assume the worst?”
I’d NEVER thought of it that way.
I’d always thought I was preparing myself for rejection, or pain, or worse.
But really I was torturing myself.
Worrying about things that hadn’t happened.
Limiting myself without even realizing it!
But life feels GOOD when you shift your thinking.
Doesn’t it FEEL better thinking of all the great things that could happen?
It FEELS better coming up with all the reasons it’ll go right, RIGHT?!?
Changing how you think changes how you see.
And changing how you see changes everything.
It’s magical.
But it’s not something that’s easy to explain.
Because, seriously, how do you tell people:
“If you want to see a change, you have to change how you see.”
In one painting, Philip Barlow says what I’ve struggled to say for years:
So I wrote him a letter:
Your blurry paintings are a visually striking representation of how limits affect our clarity and the way we “see” the world.
We’re at a momentous time in history – shifting out of the drudgery and bore of life and “jobs” as we know them.
Like the renaissance lighting up the dark ages, we’re emerging into a golden age of creativity and possiblity…
But people don’t “see” it.It’s because our collective lenses are distorted…
manipulated to make us “see” the way we live as the RIGHT way.
The ONLY way.
And it’s precisely because we “see” this way that we can’t “see” how it could be any other way.Leonardo da Vinci said,
“Learn to see, realize that everything connects to everything else.”
I’ve looked from so many angles my head is spinning and I’m suffering the “curse of knowledge” trying to explain this:If we’re ever going to be happy and reach our potential we have to learn to “see” from a different perspective.
So, flip the model – instead of being something we wait for: happiness, helping others, and meaning are foundational values we are MEANT to build our lives on.
They show up in how we think about and “see” the world around us.
They show up in what we believe is possible.
They show up in what we think life’s all about and what we think we’re supposed to do with our lives.
They show up in how we LIVE.
How we spend our time and energy.Our current model says,
“Figure it out. Do it alone. Put your dreams in layaway and pay for them spending your time and energy doing work that doesn’t matter… work you don’t care about.”If only someone would stand up and say, “I know a different way! Let me show you!” That’s ME. I’ve been “getting started” in sharing this message for years. Because I didn’t know how to “show” people WHAT they see. But that’s just what you’ve done. You’ve shown us how we see… and WHAT we see.
Then asked permission to use his art.
His answer:
Want to change the world with me?
Let’s start our journey by changing how we see.
What does that mean?
What does it take?
And how do we get that?
One step at a time.
****Tools used****
Reframing
Perspective