The Power of Perspective Shifting in Today’s World

There’s a famous saying that goes like:

There are 3 sides to a coin. Heads, tails & the edge.

This is a powerful concept to internalize, especially when it comes to your perception of life.

We have our perspective.

The other person’s perspective.

But there is also a mythical edge that exists.

What is contained in that edge?

Hm… Great question.

The edge contains another perspective.

A perspective where we are able to 3rd perspective ourselves, the other person & view the situation as awareness.

Awareness does not have any identity.

It just is.

In this post, we are going to be talking about perspective-shifting in-depth, one key benefit of this act & how you can implement this skillset into your life.

Change your perspective, change your reality.

Dangers of the Untamed Ego

The exact opposite of seeing the edge of the coin is when we only see our perspective.

We view ourselves as the main character in life & that everything revolves around us.

The ego is not bad by any means.

It allows us to give ourselves an identity in this noisy world.

But an untamed ego causes us to become selfish & violent.

The person with the untamed ego looks at the picture & sees themselves as the entire picture.

The person with the tamed ego sees the picture & realizes that he/she is a pixel in the picture.

Major paradigm shift.

Why is this so big?

Because when you tame your ego, you become a systems thinker rather than a component thinker.

A component thinker is someone who only operates with the ‘what is it in for me’ mentality.

But the systems thinker is able to understand their role in the sea of other moving parts, aka society.

When the ego is tamed via hardships, challenges & losses, wisdom emerges.

And as we begin our life-long journey towards wisdom, we gain more data points for perspective shifting.

Practical Benefits of Perspective Shifting

The major practical benefit of seeing the bigger picture & seeing someone else’s point of view is that it slows your moves down.

Remember this:

Emotions come & go. But the consequences can come & stay.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, it’s easy to become impulsive.

The ego feels threatened & we can go into tailgating mode.

This can lead to an accident.

But with the perspective-shifting mind, we are able to realize that there are MANY cars in the highway.

This particular fellow possibly cut off many others.

In this case, a part of you may wonder why this person is in such a rush?

Is it behavioral or situational?

If it is behavioral, then this individual probably cuts everyone off.

They are just a reckless driver.

If it is situational, then the person may be in a rush to get somewhere.

Hm… maybe a job interview?

But in both these situations, you have considered the other person’s perspective.

This simple act of inquiry slows your movements down and prevents you from being impulsive.

Just picture how many opportunities were snatched away because we lost our cool.

Or how many times we wanted a rewind button?

Those are from moments where we moved TOO fast.

The main practical benefit of perspective-shifting is that we slow down.

At first, slowing down is a conscious act.

Just like anything in life, we need to put in the cognitive effort to learn something.

But the more we practice and learn, the easier it becomes.

The conscious act becomes a subconscious act.

And that’s when we embody a slower, smoother behavior pattern.

The trait of an emotionally intelligent individual.

How to Perspective Shift

Hopefully, by now you are understanding the importance of perspective shifting.

The untamed ego is holding us back.

So how do we tame it & gather more insights?

Well, there are 2 ways.

The first method is tension free.

The second method is with tension.

Both methods need to be leveraged in order to build your perspective.

And that’s how we unlock this massive superpower.

Method 1: Tension Free

In Yoga practice, there is a method known as Jnana Yoga.

The path of knowledge.

When we lack knowledge, it is as though we are living in darkness.

Picture a dark room, no light in sight.

And now I ask you to walk around.

What happens?

‘I just keep bumping into random things.’

Exactly.

But if I give you a match to light… you’ll notice something.

The room incrementally lights up more.

Not by a lot.

But just by a little.

This is the path of tension-free.

Where you are seeking knowledge from external sources.

This blog post is an example of knowledge.

The fire that is lighting up the darkroom.

In order to get this knowledge, you need to build the habit of self-educating.

This is when you are actively giving yourself more data points in order to draw from later on.

Blogs, books, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc.

This allows you to lower the entropy of your mind.

Don’t just consume knowledge… But apply it.

Although I call it the tension-free path, I don’t suggest that this path is without difficulty.

All the knowledge means nothing if its isn’t applied in real-world scenarios.

Method 2: Tension Full

For this path, you have no choice in the matter.

Tough times find all of us.

Our interpretation however is our choice.

The only way to reach maturity is thru stages of immaturity.

Immaturity is when we have high entropy in our internal world.

And maturity is when we are lowering the entropy.

Lowering the chaos & connecting more dots.

This is where we are able to gain more perspective because we have been an idiot ourselves.

To put it gently lol.

Imagine that you got drunk & made a fool of yourself a few weeks ago.

And as you were drunk, you said pretty mean things to one of your friends.

The next morning, you realize your mistake & apologize to your friend.

Your friend decides to forgive you.

Water under the bridge.

The next time you go out, your brother gets drunk & calls YOU a mean name.

You’re livid.

The next morning, he apologizes.

Immediately, you are able to draw into a data point of you in the past of being an idiot.

You realize how quickly your friend forgave you.

And now it is easier to understand the perspective of your brother who is asking for forgiveness as well.

You get the point.

The main goal of perspective-shifting is gaining more data points for our minds to be able to draw from.

Knowledge & experiences are kings in this atmosphere.

For the world of tension-free & tension full, we can not run away from knowledge & experiences.

Leverage those.

Perspective Shifting Mindset

This post discussed the dangers of the untamed ego.

And how we can tame it via our lives with knowledge & experience.

We grow thru hardships & losses.

That’s just the reality of the game.

The more we realize that we are a pixel in the picture rather than the entire picture itself, a natural humility comes over us.

Not the humility when you’re undermining your success.

You get the wrong humility when you compare yourself to humans.

The right humility is when you compare yourself to the universe.

Only then do you realize that you are a spec of sand on the beach.

This perspective allows you to tame your ego in a much faster manner.

As the ego is tamed, we build knowledge & experiences.

The 2 worlds that allow us to build data points to reference in the present & future.

In the world of humans, you never know when a slowed down approach will come in handy.

Start practicing in any situation you can.

When you want to react, don’t.

When you want to get angry, distance.

And when you want to judge, aim to understand.

Perspective shifting is a process.

And a powerful one at that.

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– ArmaniTalks