How do you see the world? Is it a place full of possibility? A dangerous place? A place where there is hate more than love? Context is everything. It’s not just about how you view the world but how you view yourself in it. Are you too focused on yourself or your problems that you fail to see the big picture? Have failures snatched your optimism. Have difficult experiences robbed you of your joy? Have disappoints snuffed out all hope. Have insurmountable trials overwhelmed you and stripped you from the drive to try again?
Sometimes, we need to take the time to adjust the lens through which we view life. We must take a realistic picture of how we view it and with a discerning eye examine what needs to be filtered out of the image.
How Do You Know When It’s Time to Adjust Your Lens?
1.) Your Vision Has Become Blurry: Perhaps the hope that you once had has become cloudy and hard to see. What you once believed as ‘possible’ has been blurred by disappointments, failures and defeat. It’s time to adjust your lens. Use the past difficult experiences as learning lessons. Allow them to be stepping stones to propel you higher and not stumbling blocks that pull you down. Choose to forgive yourself and forgive others and clear your vision.
2.) Your Words are Full of Negativity: Take a day to listen to the way you talk. How do you speak about yourself? How do you speak about others? Are your words building or tearing down? Are your words encouraging or are your words destroying. Be cognitive of your words and what you’re saying. Challenge yourself to speak positively about yourself and others. Find something kind to say about others and don’t allow past experiences or prejudices to become a hinderance.
3.) You’ve Lost Faith: Do you believe the sun will rise tomorrow? Do you believe that if you use your keys that your apartment door will open? Do you believe that if you drop something it will fall based on the law of gravity? These things all take faith and the truth of the matter is we all have faith. Even in the most minor things we have faith. Faith is simple and childlike. But eventually enough hurts can make you question the faith you once had. Take the time to invest in your faith again. Don’t lose sight of the fact that faith is simply choosing to believe. What do you need to choose to believe?
4.) You’ve Become Nearsighted & You Can No Longer See the Big Picture: If you live your life only about you and for you, to benefit you and your circle, how do you really expect to live a life that makes a difference? People that make a difference in the world deliberately choose to focus on others outside of themselves. They are willing to serve and lead in humility. Be diligent about enlarging your perspective. See beyond your circumstances. See the other people in your world and look for possibilities to connect with other people in new ways.
5.) You Only See Yourself in the Picture: If you go through life only focused only on yourself then you’re missing the point. We are not meant to live only for ourselves. We are meant to relationally interact with others. We need people and people need us. Expand your view to see more than just yourself. Consider who you could be serving, helping and connecting with. Consider who you can learn from? See more than just yourself.