Change Your Story, Change Your Experience

For some people I think this topic can get a bit weird and "woo-woo", however, I'll ask you to stick with it, follow through the end and then reflect on what it means to you. 

Follow it through

There is an exercise in a book called "A Course in Miracles" which says "Nothing is as I see it". When you start to think about it, it's a really deep message, because its true. Everything we see, we interpret with our own back story of previous experiences, values and opinions. 

Read on because when we follow it through, this line of thinking can help us to reduce our stress levels and create better results in our careers and beyond. 

Three Examples

The Coin

I just picked a coin from the shelf in my office where I am writing this.

It has a heads and a tails side and and a value of £2.

Those are attributes I've learned to attach to it. It also has an edge, but I don't often think about that in relation to a coin.

Imagine if you showed one aspect of my coin to three people who had never seen a coin before. Two might describe it as a shiny disc with a gold outer and a silver inner. One of those might suggest that it is a memorial of some sort to a sea battle in war (that's what the tails side has on it). The other would describe it as a picture of a woman with a crown on her head, probably a queen because that's what we associate with it. 

What about the third person who only saw the edge.

From the angle they are viewing from and depending on the light, they might just describe it as a thin rectangle of shiny metal. 

Who is right? Of course they all are, but if they each described just what they see we might think they were describing three different objects.

The point is that the three different people will have a different experience of the same thing because of the perspective they are looking from.

How does that help you understand that other people may have a different perspective to life, events, people or things depending on the perspective they are looking from. How could you look at things differently to feel better about them, calmer, or to come up with another solution to a problem? 

The book

I happened to speak to my Dad this evening. He's in his late eighties and was telling me that as they can't go out as much, he and my mum have been going through things. 

He picked up a book from a box today, which he read on the tube to work when he was in his early twenties. He told me how it reminded him of the crowds on the station, of particular interchanges on the District Line. And I could tell, even over the phone, that he was smiling as he told me how he remembered that he and my mum would bump into each other on the tube station coming home in the days when they were starting to court. He laughed as then told me that these "chance" meetings were somehow engineered between them. 

What have you got either physically or as a memory, that reminds you of good times and makes you laugh and smile right now?

How much better could your life be if you recalled those things in times when you felt stressed, anxious, or upset? 

The Eye

I once asked my son which way the London Eye turns. We were standing on one bank of the Thames looking at it. "Clockwise Daddy" he said, quite correctly. 

Then he added, "but if we were over there on the other side of the river it would be anticlockwise".

How I wish I had been that aware at his age! Joking aside, it's a great lesson if we bother to heed it.

How could you look at that problem that's vexing you right now, that person who you find annoying, or your job, differently?

So that you could find the solution, get on better, or enjoy your job more? 

Now Act

Now you have a choice. You can click away and get on with your day; or, you can take a few minutes before you do, to reflect on what this means for you and commit to taking some action to tell a different story to yourself about what is going on, and get a better result. 

Your story to write. Your career to create. Your life to live.

Your choice.