If you say so

It's a new year.  Fifteen days in I have managed to find one quiet hour to sit and think and Remember.  I'm grateful that I've had enough practice with this now that it doesn't take me long at all to find myself and listen.  It used to not come at all...then months...weeks...a day or so, and now just the time it takes for a quiet warm shower and a cup of tea will do the trick.  

I find that talking to myself is really helpful and brings clarity.  So many things are coming to mind, but only one idea is easing its way towards the surface: how we choose and power our perspective. 

Last night one of my dearest friends and I went to dinner before heading to a comedy show at The Beacon theater here in NYC.  Both headlining comedians were smart and funny, but it was one thing that the opener said that has stayed with me today.  He told the story of how he hated NYC.  He thought it was terrible and all the people in it were mean - a horrid place.  He had come here for a job and was leaving to go to LA for greener pastures.  The last night that he was in NYC he was on the F train going home after a gig and the doors opened at the train station as they always do.  As they did, he noticed a musician playing his violin on the platform, something he'd seen a thousand times.  At first, he was annoyed, feeling imposed upon by the person's music.  As "watch the closing doors" came on the loudspeaker and the doors started to shut, he realized that this entire time he was in NYC, he had viewed the place and its people like he viewed that musician - being imposed upon and presuming malintent.  For some reason at that moment though, it dawned on him that there was another way he could view the musician.  Perhaps it didn't have to be an imposition; perhaps the city isn't as big and bad as he thought it was; perhaps the people were not all heartless villains; perhaps this entire time he had lived in one of the greatest cities on the planet, he had wasted his time living a life that presupposed negativity.  Now, only on the eve of him leaving, did he realize that there was another way he could have looked at things and experienced them.  If he had, maybe things could have also turned out differently for him...maybe more positively.  He would never know.  As he retells it, he says it was at this moment that he started sobbing on the train.  Overcome by the realization that he had spent all of his precious time and opportunity here in NYC being negative and he could never get his time back. 

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Similarly, I've seen this shift in perspective in some of my clients recently.  Some have found that things they perceived as difficult are not actually as difficult after they've decided they aren't.  Some have found that people are not out to get them, as they believed.  Those who have found a way to choose the positive and remain open have accelerated their progress towards their goals and are feeling happier and more hopeful than ever about their lives and the potential of their future.  

They have shifted their perspective.  Just as our comedian friend on the F train did.  

The thing is, perspective matters.  It's the framework through which we make choices.

In this New Year I am personally recommitting to my positive default.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive or blindly apply rose colored glasses across the board BUT I do stay in the positive lane.  I prefer it there and it's served me much better in both the short and long term.  

This year we will have many many choices to make for ourselves and sometimes for others.  I'd like to invite us all to raise more awareness to the perspective we choose (and it is a choice), then challenge yourself to consistently apply the perspective that lifts us up...that appreciates the music.