Have you ever gotten so caught up in someone else’s life events that you skipped out on your own? The magic of social media is a great catalyst to bringing everyone else’s story into our lives, and often this is a hard stop to our own personal growth. So captivated are we by the details of others that it can become easy to get side-tracked on showing up in our own lives and in our own successes. Comparison is not a friend to personal accomplishments.
A new client came to me with exactly this scenario. She felt as if she were watching a movie in regard to her friends and her friend’s life events and she was experiencing a lull “in comparison.” That lull was slowly eroding her self-confidence and motivation. How could she ever achieve what she felt “everyone else” was achieving?
I urged her to look not at the situations she was hearing about and viewing, but at her perspectives or beliefs in regard to those situations. Simply put…change your perspective and YOU CHANGE. In this case, mind your own business and you step into it!
Here are 3 quick perspective shift tips for staying true to you:
- Draw a large dot in the middle of a blank piece of paper. Now take a look at the paper. What do you see? Write it down. Were you focused only on the dot in the middle of the page? Could you see beyond that? If you could, what did you see when you looked at that paper? Did you see the wide-open blank space just waiting to be filled? Did you see opportunity for more? Were you looking to fill the page, or were you focused only on the dot you placed there originally? Your perspective is your belief system. It is what you allow yourself to see, to think and to ultimately act on or not. What does doing this exercise allow you to do in your everyday life?
- Imagine that you were told at work that you were being let go in 2 weeks. You would reason that this 2-week period was too short a span to get a new job, contact your connections, and speak to your clients. You may panic at the thought of no paycheck. Your perspective would be focused on how much you had to do in too short a time frame. Now suppose that there was a big storm and a power outage and when you contacted the utility company you were informed that they were working on restoring power and it would be about 2 weeks. You may feel that this is an eternity. How will you manage without lights, without your refrigerator running and your cell phone and computer charging? What will you do without Internet access? In this scenario 2 weeks would feel like a really, really long time. Same 2 weeks as the first example. Same 336 hours. Why in one case would this time frame feel condensed and too short, and in another like it lasted a lifetime?
PERSPECTIVE.
Your point of view, your belief in that moment changes the moment. Guess what? You have control over this. You may not be able to control being fired or power outages, but you can control how you respond and react to those situations. You can control what you DO with those 336 hours.
- Ask yourself a simple question every morning. Ask yourself…how can I USE today? Write down 3 things you can do to bring today into your life. Three things you can do to align your day with what you believe it should be. Take a moment to envision yourself doing these things. What do they bring into your life? How does this make you feel?
Now at the end of the day ask yourself the following…how did I USE today? Write down how you controlled and managed your day. Were you able to make today your power tool for shifting your perspectives in the moment? Were you able to use and capitalize on the moments at hand? What did you manifest by staying focused?
Randi Levin, CPC, founder & CEO, Randi Levin Coaching – is a nationally recognized transitional life strategist, Fortune 500 keynote, author, and reinvention expert. Randi Levin Coaching supports women in becoming legends in their own lives! Legacy is a mindset and a muscle that when flexed can become a power tool for change and redirection in the current moment. Randi is a catalyst toward a shift in perspectives in regard to fear, growth, purpose and overall success—all key elements of her Signature GPS Coaching System. Randi Levin Coaching is widely quoted and featured in top media outlets. She is a featured expert for Thrive Global, DivorceForce, The Three Tomatoes, Women for One, and Better After 50. Her workshops have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and you may have seen her in HuffPost, Reader’s Digest, Business Insider, American Express OPEN Forum, and Working Mother Magazine. She is regularly a guest on top podcasts and radio shows. Randi is a contributing author in the anthology series Get RESULTS!