David W. Zierk, PsyD

Deal with the situation without making it bigger.

This life skill spotlights the importance of perspective. When practiced, this skill expands your reality by moving you beyond perception. Amazing, right?

You’re bombarded by stimuli in daily life. The rapid mingling of your five senses explains how you process your surroundings. Each sensory channel provides critical input and is uniquely responsible for shaping perception. Together, they offer a complete picture of what’s happening. Or do they?

Intriguingly, much of how you comprehend the world is whittled down to light and sound. Of course, the other senses uniquely inform your experience. Touch, smell, and taste are invaluable as they make life more appealing. Without touch, playing piano becomes chopsticks. Touch provides texture and allows you to feel quality. Beyond detecting situations from romance to danger, smell triggers distant and otherwise unreachable memories that reside deep in your brain. It is a smell that “takes you back” to days gone by. Finally, only through taste do you truly understand the meaning of bitter-sweet. Also, without enjoying flavor, there would be no sweet tooth.

Respecting all senses, let’s now concentrate on light and sound.

Light impacts everything from mood to alertness. When deprived, a form of depression called seasonal affective disorder (SAD) can develop. The so-called winter depression, brought on by shorter days and more extended periods of darkness, alters people’s relationship with their surroundings. Visual perception involves shapes, designs, and colors. Without the latter, life becomes black, white, and gray, useful but hardly entertaining. What was once vivid would appear drab. Truly, sight makes life easier to comprehend. Visual learners rely heavily on reading and seeing pictures. Various studies show roughly 65% of the population are visual learners. Even more breathtaking, about 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Let’s add that vision occupies about 30% of your entire cortex. Do we need to say more?

Last but not least is your listening experience. From the sound of a dripping faucet to an air-raid siren, depending upon intensity and salience, what you hear happens in the background and foreground. Sometimes, it’s your choice.

“Click.” What was that sound? If you were hiking at dusk and heard the “click,” the hair on the back of your neck would stand up and become a call to action. In a different situation, a similar click barely catches your attention, such as when you are in a staff meeting, and the person next to you clicks their pen, not enough to be irritating, just enough to notice.

When sound is organized, it’s called music. When dissonance is heard, it becomes noise. What makes music interesting is that one person’s favorite symphony is another person’s racket. In music, “to each, his own” explains preferences.

A fun scientific fact is that your left ear tunes into music better than your right, which is better at understanding language. This is because of a concept called contra-laterality, meaning opposites, in which the left side of your brain processes information from the right side of the world. Wow, who knew? Your ears are not the same!

In summary, perception is an elaborate process that blends raw sensory data to create a meaningful understanding of the world around you. While extraordinary, beyond perception is another unique phenomenon called perspective, which can change your world.

Keep Things In Perspective

Perspective explains how you and your best friend can watch the same movie and have diverse opinions about its quality. How the two of you filter the film, which relies upon life experiences, memory, emotion, and sensitivities, accounts for how the same stimulation produces different sensations.

The richness of relationships and personal development shapes one's perspective. Life is complex, and so are we. By contrast, the classic phrase “Is the glass half empty or half full?” crudely divides people into pessimists and optimists. This rapid test typecasts your worldview and how you approach situations. While there may be some broad truth to your answer, more frequently, the result reflects something approximately correct and absolutely wrong.

What does this brain twister mean?

It means keeping things in perspective is vital to keeping your sanity in check. Don’t fall for quick fixes. Refrain from swallowing things hook, line, and sinker. Keep your eyes open and fill your mind with curiosity. Also, give yourself sufficient breathing room to realize that universal statements are not gospel but lie on the range of clever hunches, sarcastic barbs, and bare-faced lies.

Like most things, worldviews and mindsets exist on a spectrum. Whether your glass is half empty or half full, the amount of water in it rises and falls based on context and circumstances. Remember, even the weather can alter your mood.

So, when it comes to understanding how you understand something, while your upbringing and relationship history are influential, you have a mind of your own. That’s right. You do have free will. Your perspective is up to you; it can expand or shift if you practice a few things.

Unlike most things…

As humans, we are deeply attracted to instant wins and snap enlightenment. We look for shortcuts and ways to cheat the system when possible. This life perspective is acceptable until doing so doesn’t work. It’s fine to be passionate about a topic and to have an informed opinion. However, when your opinion matter-of-factly rejects positions held by others, you may be so locked into your point of view that your perspective disallows dialogue across the aisle.

Uniquely, having perspective requires perspective.

Quick Tip…The point of this discussion is not to put you down, call you a cynic, or label you a fool but to highlight the importance of thinking beyond your perception and considering the perspective of others. Doing so broadens your worldview and moves you toward positive-sum interactions with others. Essentially, this quick tip asks you to listen to your better angels.

Perspective Taking

Let’s now move toward what it takes to gain perspective about your perspective.

Step One…Attention

Like the first principle of learning, focus on your current perspective by activating self-reflection and self-monitoring. That is, bring attention to what you’re focusing on. Being curious about what you know and how you know requires a willingness to examine your beliefs, opinions, decisions, and preferences. This can be started by giving it a good guess. As in, “I guess that I lean toward conservative politics because growing up, my father was outspoken about what liberals were doing wrong.”

It’s important to remember that the process of perspective-taking focuses on getting it right, not being right.

The popular term “mindfulness” invites you to observe your thinking without judgment. So, be mindful of your perspective by being present, shifting your awareness to your thinking, and accepting what others are saying not as naked truth but as an exciting point of view.

Step Two…Language

Words reflect thinking, which explains emotions. Emotions give life depth and color, and actions make words, thoughts, and emotions come alive.

Reflecting on the above description reveals the power of language. Tuning into your words can teach you much about your thinking and perspective. Then, ask yourself whether your words are inviting or dismissive, empowering or discouraging, helpful or hurtful. Do your words expand your mind or reinforce your beliefs and privilege being rational over relational?

Thinking can be fluid or rigid. Take your pick. The former shows an interest in novelty, while the latter reflects repetitiveness. One of them expands your mind, while the other rewards your knowledge. Only one of them promotes perspective-building. Again, take your pick.

Step Three…Empathy

What do you care about? Your perspective is narrow if it’s focused on protecting your turf and winning at all costs. This type of action is equivalent to a zero-sum game, which is only fun for you. If you’ve heard the term but aren’t sure of its meaning, the “zero-sum” refers to “I win, you lose.” Originating from game theory, it reflects the propensity where one person’s gain would be another’s loss. Poker is a great example. While everyone wants to win the pot, doing so is only possible when someone loses their wagers.

On the other hand, broadening your perspective is facilitated by thinking in terms of “win-win.” The fastest way to connect with another person is to get out of your mind and contemplate what’s going on in the other person's mind. This starts with practicing the art of “reading the room.” This phrase refers to rapidly assessing the mood, dynamics, and underlying qualities in a social setting. For some, this is easier said than done.

Consider entering a room and seeing a gigantic thermometer to make it easy. This isn’t your ordinary thermometer. Instead of measuring the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit, this magic thermometer monitors and reads the general feeling of the room. It might read “serious,” “playful,” or “curious.” What the readout, this instrument would give you an at-a-glance ability to read the room. Try this the next time you walk into a room you’re not accustomed to.

Once you’ve grown comfortable reading the room, the next step is learning how to read a specific person. While this may sound impossible, it’s done by practicing empathy. Without going into too much detail, being empathic involves focusing your thoughts and feelings on what the other person is thinking and feeling. Taking on another person’s perspective is accomplished when you see what they see, feel what they feel, and understand why they’re thinking what they are.

Step Four…Self + Other + Us

The equation listed above (self + other = us) reveals the prize for working on expanding your perspective. When you consider your opinion alongside others, you’ll experience excellent connections.

Enhancing connections and expanding your perspective is accelerated when you put time and energy into your relationships. One strategy for keeping your eye on the ball is to move toward mutuality. This phrase accentuates the importance of doing things that benefit you and others. The power of mutuality fosters growth in your authenticity, social competence, and relational reputation. This latter concept is critical.

Relational reputation is how others perceive and experience you. Your reputation enters the room well before your body shows up. Knowing this tidbit gives you an advantage. Remembering your relational reputation will keep you on track while focusing on and investing in mutuality. If your reputation needs a bit of polish, this is accomplished by doing things that reflect your true self. Instead of being defensive, be curious. Replace straight-at-you opinions with round-a-bout suggestions. After you do something, ask yourself, “Am I proud of what I did and how I did it?” When the answer is a resounding “yes,” congratulations, you’re moving in the right direction. Keep going!

Summing Up and Moving On

Perspective, as illustrated in the diagram below, is a journey. It begins by turning your attention inward and listening to your own words. Are they leading you towards positivity or negativity? Are they attracting people or pushing them away? Then, the power of empathy comes into play, elevating your perspective to new horizons. Lastly, contemplating something you can never give yourself broadens your perspective, potentially blowing your mind.

Remember, your mind expands by learning. So, this is where your challenge begins and ends. Ask yourself, “Who’s in control – you or your mind?”

Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?