Mountain and Lake view
Gaining Perspective
You are driving to work and you are late, you get stuck behind a tractor or a bus, how do you react?
Somebody is rude to you in a shop or barges past you in the street how do you feel? You get a stroppy email from a friend or work colleague or you make a stupid mistake, how long do you think about it?
As you are thinking about it, reliving it, thinking about replies you might have given how do you feel then?
I am willing to bet that you don’t feel happy and content.
It is really easy these days to get very caught up in our own little bubble, driving in a car alone, engaging on social media alone, emailing our colleagues rather than talking to them. We become isolated and insulated and things that intrude into our world can become a real irritation. Also we see everything from our own view point and we often don’t talk about things with others, which would give us a different perspective. It’s also really easy to start to obsess about things, keep running events over in our minds. Doing this holds the situation inside us for longer, you keep reliving the feelings and it can be difficult to move on. Also your decisions now and in the future will be coloured by the thoughts and feelings of the past events. This will keep happening with different things that happen to you and you can start to get quite hemmed in by your reactions to past events that you haven’t really got over or let go of. This can have the physical effect of raising your cortisol levels, then your blood pressure, cholesterol, muscle tone; you may start having symptoms. Headaches, IBS, a stiff neck or back.
In my yoga classes we were taught to think about walking up a mountain, as you ascend you will go through trees. At that point your view will be restricted, it may be hard to see where to go and there are lots of things in the way. If you keep progressing upwards you will eventually leave the trees behind and start to see the view from a higher perspective. The higher you go the bigger picture you will see.
Going up the mountain maybe seeing an argument from someone else’s point of view, it may be counting your blessings, it may be relaxing and thinking, “I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll enjoy listening to the radio while I’m here”. Going to speak to someone who has upset you, not all guns blazing but trying to find out what the solution could be. We don’t know what is happening to anyone else, what they are dealing with but when we do it can foster understanding. Sometimes situations cannot be fixed and if not walk away, say you’ve done your best and let it go. If you able forgive yourself and the other person. You will feel lighter and freer not carrying all that rage/anger/irritation around with you.
Be present in the moment, not caught up with past hurts, aggravations and insults, then you are freer to act appropriately now and also be more open to life in this moment.
By doing this you will find that time doesn’t rush by so fast, because you are present and aware NOW, enjoying and appreciating your life, not fretting over past hurts and annoyances.
In my yoga classes we were taught to think about walking up a mountain, as you ascend you will go through trees. At that point your view will be restricted, it may be hard to see where to go and there are lots of things in the way. If you keep progressing upwards you will eventually leave the trees behind and start to see the view from a higher perspective. The higher you go the bigger picture you will see.
Going up the mountain maybe seeing an argument from someone else’s point of view, it may be counting your blessings, it may be relaxing and thinking, “I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll enjoy listening to the radio while I’m here”. Going to speak to someone who has upset you, not all guns blazing but trying to find out what the solution could be. We don’t know what is happening to anyone else, what they are dealing with but when we do it can foster understanding. Sometimes situations cannot be fixed and if not walk away, say you’ve done your best and let it go. If you able forgive yourself and the other person. You will feel lighter and freer not carrying all that rage/anger/irritation around with you.
Be present in the moment, not caught up with past hurts, aggravations and insults, then you are freer to act appropriately now and also be more open to life in this moment.
By doing this you will find that time doesn’t rush by so fast, because you are present and aware NOW, enjoying and appreciating your life, not fretting over past hurts and annoyances.
Try it, you may be surprised at how great the view is.