How often have you found yourself stuck in a place of discomfort? A discussion, an argument, a viewpoint? Now, forgive me if I’m in the zone of teaching my granny to suck eggs, but I’m going to write this anyway – sometimes a slight difference in where we stand, literally and metaphorically, can have an incredible impact on how we see things.

I’m part of a secret FB group whose focus is creating poetry, conscious writing and photography. Last week, the facilitator gave us an exercise to choose an object and photograph it ten times from ten different perspectives. We were then to post our photos in the group, along with our thoughts on what impact this exercise had on us.   ‘Ah yeah’, I said to myself, ‘that’ll be easy’.

Off I went to Mt Stewart yesterday. It was a lovely coolish day, the sun was teasing from behind the clouds, so the light wasn’t that sharp. I started with a beautiful cerise-coloured rhododendron tree (the one to the right of the main path on the way to the lake, if you’re familiar with the layout of Mt Stewart).

And a couple of photos later I realised that although I was taking different shots – distant, close, closer, really close, from underneath and above – I was standing in the same position. Hmm. I changed position, focussing on the same blossom. And what an extraordinary difference. I suddenly noticed the branch supporting the flower, a different view of the leaves and behind these was the stamen of a dying blossom which had been visited by a spider who’d created the most delicate of webs.

Obviously I can’t display the photos here. And in fact they are not the reason for this article. As I continued around the lake, I did the same exercise with a beautiful Griselina tree, a glorious white rhodey, ferns and bluebells.

Each time, I was taken aback in amazement with the different perspective I experienced when I changed position and focus. I can see now why the facilitator gave us this apparently ‘easy’ task. Easy it may have been, but the effects on me were profound.

Inner Wisdom

Yea, this is stuff we all know, like an inner wisdom. But how often do we pay attention to that inner wisdom?

We know we need to change our positions – physical and mental – in order to see things in a different way. We don’t need to make a melodramatic change, just shift a little bit. Maybe an old, long-standing issue is blocking our path – perhaps a bit of self-righteousness is preventing us from awareness of the beauty that’s out there.

More than likely the changes we need to make are slight, much less that we think. Maybe we just need to take time to really look at what we are looking at without fear or useless emotional baggage. Maybe we just need to give ourselves the gift of time to consider our adult, conscious choice, to change our mood and see what it is we are looking at with the eyes of love.

  • Give yourself private, uninterrupted time to consider a current area of discomfort.
  • Perhaps write the challenge on a piece of paper. Place the paper on the floor.
  • Move around the paper. Look at it from different viewing points, allowing yourself to imagine that each different viewing point is an actual different reality.
  • Ask yourself what differing perspectives your different viewing points represent?
  • Maybe you don’t need to change what you’re looking at. You just need to change where you stand.

I’d really love to receive your feedback. Email me: trudy@trudyarthurs.com. Please join me on Facebook: Trudy Arthurs, the Confidence Specialist.    Tel: 07810 511 600 – call to arrange your free 30-min Enjoying Your Challenge Clarity Session. With blessings ‘til next month.

© Dancing Leopards Ltd 2017