How To Change Your Perspective (about anything)
I’ve just emerged from four days at Bald Head Island, North Carolina. It’s a remote barrier island community where its people strive to live in harmony with nature. A passenger ferry or private vessel is the only way to get there. No cars allowed. On the island, you travel by paddles, pedals, foot or golf cart. The removal of all the fast moving things of life completely changes your perspective. Less noise. Less hurry. Less distraction. It reminded me how a change of scenery changes my viewpoint.
Slowing down, listening, removing distractions, being closer to the Earth is an energetic shift. The Japanese expression shinrin-yoku literally translates to ‘forest bathing.’ Not just walking in nature but being with it. Looking where you don’t often look. Listening in an undistracted way. Noticing how each ‘member’ of the forest is connected. Feeling the energy of trees, the frogs, the bugs. They all have a purpose for being there. Walking through Bald Head’s Maritime Forest with that kind of intention is why you’re reading this blog right now.
Your business, your career, parenting, relationships, all the things of life will present challenges. They are right in front of you. You think you actually see them. I mean, you do see the obvious thing. The business isn’t bringing in enough money, your boss doesn’t see you, your kid doesn’t listen to you. We’re all wired to just react to those things.
But what if you intentionally changed your perspective?
Go somewhere you haven’t been.
Move your feet. Get closer to it or further away.
Pick up your head. Look within instead of ahead.
Turn the problem upside down.
I often shoot photographs from a different perspective. I try to see things in a way others don’t. Sometimes, I forget to do it in my life and my business.
For whatever challenge is in front of you: Challenge yourself to do something with it that you haven’t done before. How else might you solve it? How can it be an opportunity, or even a gift, instead of a problem?
Framework for changing your perspective:
Rethink it.
Mindset matters. Thoughts become things. If you think it’s not solvable, it’s not! But if you believe in the possibility of an answer, a solution, a miracle, only then can it occur. This is rule number one of manifesting, the law of attraction. You don’t get what you want, you get what you believe.
“Whether you think you can or you cannot, you’re right. ”
Rehearse it.
Whatever you say over and over to yourself (and anyone else who will listen) hardens that position in your mind and body. You get trapped by your story about whatever this challenge is. And if you tell it to yourself enough times, you believe it. Here’s the nugget: Nothing has meaning, until you add it. Every single word you say creates your reality. Your story about what’s happening is running the show. Examine what you are saying to yourself about your circumstances. That voice inside you is powerful, make it support you instead of tearing you down or convincing you that you can’t overcome whatever you are facing.
If you say, “running a business is hard” enough times, that’s what your business will become. HARD. That’s how it will actually live in your mind and body. HARD. If you say, “running my business challenges me in new ways every single day, and I am grateful for what it is teaching me, how I am expanding, how I am failing so I can learn!” Now, you have a new possibility!
How can you change your words to shift your experience?
Revise it.
Asking a different question can be the path to answers you didn’t see before. Do you need more clients or fewer of the right ones that you can super serve with your unique services? Do you need to spend more time marketing your business on social media or more time studying which parts of your marketing are moving the needles you care about the most? Is your business truly aligned with your values? Just try asking different questions!
What are three different ways you could look at your current marketing challenge (opportunity), your business problem (opportunity), your customers (opportunity) or your unruly teenager (opportunity)?
The next time you’re faced with a challenge you can’t solve, change your perspective!
If you need help with that, reach out. We like to shake things up a little.
And if you’re looking for a change of scenery, consider Bald Head Island, NC. It has 10,000 acres of untouched beaches, marsh and maritime forest and is home to the state’s oldest lighthouse. Old Baldy was originally built in 1794 and rebuilt in 1817. It’s an octagon with 105 steps you can climb to get a completely new view!
Shelly Leslie climbing up through the hatch atop Old Baldy, Bald Head Island Lighthouse, May 2024
Located at the southernmost of North Carolina’s cape islands, at the confluence of the Cape Fear River and Atlantic Ocean and the famous Frying Pan Shoals. The region from Cape Fear up to Cape Hatteras National Seashore is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic for the more than 2,000 shipwrecks located there.
