There’s great advice about life, love, relationships, career, how to live a good life, finances, career decisions, even spiritual dilemmas.
Frankly, I think this should be within reach of every single porcelain throne, nightstand, and above the Gideon Bible in every North American hotel room. But since I don’t quite have the capital to make that happen, I’ll just go with this instead.
I would LOVE for you all to head over, pick up a copy, and leave a review.
You should see an elephant. Floppy ears, tusks, and a trunk.
But take a moment, and shift your perspective just a little bit, and it’s a whole different image.
That’s the power of perspective. You don’t always see the whole of a piece of art, or a situation, or an experience, from your position when you first encounter it. Sometimes, you need to look at it from a new angle.
Consider that challenge that’s bugging you. Maybe it’s your teenage son and his friends; you don’t understand why they go out of their way to avoid you, when just a few months ago he seemed like such a good kid. Or perhaps it’s an issue at your church. You know the Elders believe they’re doing the right thing with this new building expansion “to attract new seekers”, but you and almost everyone else thinks it’s foolish when there are greater priorities, like missionaries in the field.
Why don’t you speak up? Is it because you don’t believe strongly enough in the mission, the same way they do? Or is it something deeper than that? Might there be something you’re missing? If you knew more, would you support that decision? Maybe.
How do you get that missing perspective?
David C. Baker has an interesting analogy in The Business of Expertise. He describes a little human inside a jar. When you’re in the jar (whether that jar is your business problem, your relationship, your extra-curricular time, or your personal mindfulness journey), you cannot read the label on the jar. You just can’t. You’re behind the label, and you’re stuck.
So, what do you do? How do you get out of the jar?
You have to shift the conversation. You have to stop talking about the problem that’s the surface, and you have to start asking some more substantial, deeper questions. Like, “Well, yes, my business is struggling. Does that mean I need more advertising? Or more staff? Or a new product? Or does it mean I need something more fundamental, like a re-set of my whole business philosophy? What am I trying to say with this business, anyway? And does it even matter if I’m here to do it?”
These are deeper, more fundamental questions. They’re the underneath of the iceberg. They don’t get viewed by the general public, but in answering these questions – in thinking through these lines – you will start to take the steps to get yourself out of the jar, and moving towards a position where you can look back and read the label for yourself.
Let me give you another analogy, and let’s get a little abstract. Suppose you are an arrow, that’s on a flight path. Now, you can choose to fly in whichever direction you want, and you’ve decided to fly directly at whatever targets you’re trying to hit. To keep the analogy clear, let’s assume these targets are another set of arrows, which represent the best options for your life, in lots of different areas. They are all coming at you, directly, and you’ve got to hit something, anything, to make an impact.
What’s likely to happen? Are you going to hit them? Any of them? Or, is it more likely that you’ll just miss? Whiff completely?
You, and these best options, aren’t likely to hit. You’re not likely to get to the point where you meet whatever you’re shooting at, because you’re shooting at too small a target. I think there’s a movie or two where the arrows or bullets actually hit each other head on, but it’s such a slim chance, that it doesn’t really make much sense to rely on that as your strategy.
What if, though, you change your perspective?
What if, instead of facing the problem head-on, you got to the side? You approach it from the outside, from a perpendicular direction? What if, instead of having only one little point of contact which you could have the slightest chance of hitting, you turned it around? What if you came at it from the other way?
Instead of aiming directly at the oncoming problems, why not get out of the way, off to the side? Now, you’re traveling “up”, and the arrows coming at you are still going to the left. This time, though, you’re much, much more likely to actually hit what you’re aiming at! Look at how easy it is to intersect with all of those different things you want! Plus, now you have options. You can pursue one, or many, solutions in your time, rather than crying that they’ve all passed you by.
Allow me to share an anecdote. I recently talked with an old friend, and told her about this Trailhead Conference – how it’s a place for people to explore something new, to see problems from a different perspective, to understand something they didn’t know before. [note – the Trailhead Conference was planned for 2019, didn’t happen, isn’t planned for any time again – SJ]
And she related a story of her other friend, who had been struggling to lose weight for years. Diets, exercise, sleep, nothing worked. She kept the weight on, kept fighting, kept failing. Kept feeling like a failure, when, really, she was fighting the wrong battle. Eventually, though, she figured out the problem and lost the weight.
So how did she do it? Liposuction? Juice cleanse? Personal trainer? CrossFit?
Nope. Nope. Nope. And nope.
All of those were solutions to the wrong problem.
All of those assumed that the issue was caloric intake (too much) or expenditure (not enough), or metabolic cycling (irregular), or routine (need to “shock” the system), or something else.
All of those were actually trying to combat the symptoms – the tip of the iceberg – when, really, something needed to be done at a much deeper level, under the surface. Down inside, where the pictures aren’t so pretty and so visible.
So – what was it? What was the thing that finally flipped the switch and helped her to lose 30 pounds?
What was that radically different thing she did?
She got divorced.
Wait, what?
Now, I don’t know all the details. But there were significant forces at work, including emotional abuse, that led to weight retention. And it makes sense. The surface issue was excess weight and feeling bad because of it. The deeper, substantive problem was that there were problems in her relationship – maybe her finances, and spirituality too. Cognitive dissonance between what she wanted (a better relationship) and what she felt obligated to do (remain married due to religious tradition) led to feelings of inadequacy.
This showed up as weight retention, a physical issue, when, really, the solution was going to be an emotional one. Solve the relationship problem, and the weight loss happens naturally. So when her husband asked for the divorce, despite how much she didn’t really want to be divorced, she relented.
During the separation, she bought a new place and worked extra hard to renovate it. Additional activity, the right kind of activity, combined with the emotional freedom to be herself, led to her losing 4 dress sizes and showing up at the divorce proceedings looking like a new person. Which she, for all intents and purposes, was.
So I have to get divorced?
NO.
I am absolutely not counseling or advising anyone to get divorced, or to get liposuction, or to go on a three-week spiritual retreat to Namibia to “find yourself”. I don’t know that those are the solution to your problem.
I am, however, pointing out that often, what we think is the problem, really isn’t.
We’re aiming at the oncoming arrows, trying to hit sharp little points, when, instead we should step to the side and look at the problem from a different perspective.
We’re struggling, but we don’t know exactly why.
And that’s okay.
It really is.
It’s okay not to have all the answers.
It’s okay to question.
It’s okay to get intrigued and to explore something new for a while.
It’s okay to walk down that side road for a bit, learn that you don’t want to keep going, and change your mind.
You know, we have erasers on our pencils for a reason.
And we have a [DELETE] key on our keyboards, too, for the very same reason. I’ve used mine a hundred times in this post so far, and that’s okay. That simply means I’m open to considering new things, trying them out, and seeing what works. What doesn’t, goes away, and nobody is worse off.
Let’s not be afraid to try something new, and, if it works out, great! If not, let’s also not beat ourselves up about it.
That trying something new is how you get perspective. And perspective is, often, the only way out of your jar.
Cheers!
footnote – this post was originally written and published in June of 2019, when I was organizing a mid-life exploration conference. It ultimate didn’t happen, but if the web crawlers find this content and that content and try to ding me for stealing, this paragraph is proof that I didn’t. I (Stephan) actually wrote and published that same content before, just on a different platform. So there.
It begins with a slight darkening. Once you realize that it is not as bright out beside you, you take off your specially-ordered, ISO-whatever-approved, custom-printed glasses and look around. You see shapes becoming crisper. The bushes are not as brilliant on their own. There is a bit of a hush to the crowd. They have also noticed the slight darkening. For all of you, when you look to the heavens, there is almost a spiritual connection. All of you, together in this place, are experiencing this. You have gathered here to sanctify this ground, to bless it with your presence as you see, as you show, as you become one with this unifying force. There is nothing else for you today – no work, no labor, no stress, no headache. You are ready for the connection. You wait for the moon to blacken out the sun; to destroy the God of the sky. To eat away your reason for being, to consume what birthed you and your people. You do not know what is happening; yet, you believed the stories your elders have told you, and you now know they were not simply fairy tales. The tension grows. It builds and builds, a crescendo of hope, fear mixed together. There is a desire – a justified trepidation – that runs through the crowd.
You watch as the moon covers, more and more, of the golden disk. At first it looked like a mouse had nibbled a bite off a cheese wheel. Then as if a dinner party had helped themselves. Then as if a wedding got out of control, and all the guests had attacked the golden disk – tearing out hunks with their hands, leaving only a brilliant crescent balanced against a pure-black sky. The crescent shrinks, narrowing, darkening, until just a small band remains.
And then, that too, is gone. And you remove your glasses to stare up at a hole in the sky- to see an absence, where you used to see presence. To see a void, a tunnel through the vastness of space to the edge of the universe. The brilliant white of the shell, corona, halo, wispy against the still-blue sky, frames it as a terrible, awesome, incredible backdrop, upon which some angels and demons have painted their greatest fears. The backdrop remains, still, unmoving, as you know and fear the end of this spectacle. The countdown resumes, and then the brilliance returns, the sun in its power and authority once more reclaiming its rightful place in the sky.
You wait – we wait – for a few moments, as the cheers of “Hooray!” And “We survived” ring out across the land. We wait a few moments, and watch, with our glasses returned to protect us again, the sliver, the slice, the line, the crescent, grows back again. But the tension has dissolved. Now it is just a curiosity. A past-time. A wonder that was, and has had all of its mystery dissipated. People have left. They continue to leave. And there is no more wonder, no more confusion. No more worry; no more fear. No more anticipation, either. Yet for all that is not, think of all there is. Restoration. – Peace – Joy. – Hope. Renewal. Adventure. Progress.
We see these, we experience, we love them all. And we go forth and live.
Stephan Writes 