Hello on another Sunday!
I am working on my Life Coach Certification and I am about to be done. My certification is based on a model called NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and the specific techniques in the method made me think of the importance of perspective in our lives.
NLP is a model that uses our neurological wiring and linguistic usage to reprogram how we see our issues. So, it is often about changing the perspective on the issue so that we can see it from a broader view. I am not too experienced in the techniques yet, but I have seen the effect it does on people in my assignments. So that made me think how important our perspective on our experiences is.
Let’s say you have been criticized for your performance at work or at school and you don’t like being criticized (well, I guess no one does). Now you have some options: (i) you go around blaming yourself for performing poorly, (ii) you go around blaming the person who criticized you, (iii) you try to think of what you learnt from this experience and (iv) you pretend nothing happened after all. What will happen with the first two is that you will get stuck in negative feelings. The last one will not give you anything. The third one will give you a better outlook. So, if you choose to go with the third option, you can tell the person who criticized you how thankful you are for the suggestions either in person or in your head. Then, you can start thinking about what you gained from it and hopefully apply it later.
Let’s say you broke up with someone. After you are done with the initial shock and the overflowing feelings, you can choose to stay with those feelings and think hard about why it happened. Or you can accept the situation and re-invent yourself. The first one is the familiar voice because the mind wants to keep what it already knows. But it does not give you much in the long run. The second one is scary but can open new doors for you later.
When you get a bad coffee for your coffee machine, you can regret it for days or you can take this as an experience and say ‘Now I know this coffee is not good’. You will then have suggestions to make to people.
It looks like opening up new ways of looking at issues can indeed give us new ways to make ourselves better and it can bring us closer to our potential. We have a choice to make.
Do you have a tendency to get stuck in one way of looking at things (I certainly do, which is why NLP helped me a lot)? Or can you see an issue from different perspectives? If you can, how did you manage to get that habit? Let’s talk about perspective-shifting today.
PS: I know that it is hard to see different perspectives in the initial stages of a break-up or in the face of criticism. There, I believe we should give ourselves time for our emotions to settle and then we can think about different perspectives. But getting emotions out comes first!