2024 September 24 Embracing a positive perspective

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about perspective. If you like what you hear today please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends and send me a message! 

Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about one of my favorite topics: perspective.

We talk about perspective a lot, along with its close friend, reaction. They are like two sides of a coin. If you manage your reactions to challenging situations you will be more likely to have a more positive perspective overall.

Similarly, if you try to keep a positive perspective, you will usually be less likely to have negative reactions to most common everyday annoyances. But perspective can also play a big part in how we view ourselves, our luck, and our lives in general.

So maybe it would be better said that we are talking about self-perspective. This is different than our self-opinion, but like most emotions, possibly related. An example: I read a story about a couple retiring in New York State and only spending about $28,000 a year to live. That’s just over $2,000 a month—in New York!

My first reaction might be: That’s incredible! How lucky for them. What’s the trick?!? In reality, they live in one of the many farming areas in the state and were able to pay off their house due to savings from free housing in exchange for labor and an inheritance, plus were able to save nearly all of one of their incomes for their entire lives.

That puts a very different perspective on the story, doesn’t it? Suddenly, instead of being some trick, it turns out it was just years of working with a plan to provide them a comfortable retirement.

But that now changes your self-perspective too. At first you were thinking you were missing out on a great trick or something, but now you are in danger of deriding yourself because you weren’t able to, or otherwise didn’t, prepare for retirement in the same way.

But remember, self-perspective affects self-esteem, so don’t go overboard on beating yourself up. A healthy self-perspective is able to acknowledge that mistakes were made on our journey through life while also giving ourselves grace for all the good things we did—perhaps things that the example couple could not do because of their life decisions.

We have a tendency to imagine that every missed opportunity was the one that would have changed our lives for the better in amazing ways! It’s a great dream, but it also probably also isn’t even close to the truth. Do you honestly think every lost lottery ticket is the grand prize winner? Or the job you didn’t take would have made you a millionaire?

True happiness comes from steadily working towards your goals. Now that doesn’t always mean wonderfully consistently—we are all human after all. But this is where having solid goals and a life vision come into play, and why they are so very important.

Back to our self-introspection. When we look at ourselves we again have to remember to keep perspective and realize that every decision that we made was driven by trying to reach the goals that seemed important to us at the moment. So if they were bad decisions, then perhaps the goals were not the best.

It has been said that you don’t improve your life by asking for the best answers,

you improve your life by asking the best questions. Asking the best questions is really the best way to support living towards your most important goals. The first question should always be: Does this bring me closer to my vision? Followed immediately by: Is this consistent with my life goals?

By now I hope it is obvious that maintaining a positive perspective is one of the best things we can do for our happiness and our resiliency. Starting off positive, or even neutral, in most situations helps us to avoid a lot of negative spirals that can happen in our lives. And don’t forget to stay aware that many people around you may have very different, often negative, perspectives.

One of the widespread attitudes these days is inclusivity. The prevailing feeling is that nothing should be said or done that could possibly leave someone left out. But this is really a false situation. Each of us is wonderfully unique and different, as we have talked about before, so almost by definition, there is essentially nothing that can be totally inclusive. Taken to its extreme, there arises the paradox of over-inclusivity leading to exclusion, exactly the opposite of what the desired effect should be!

I was just reading about an influencer, Liv Schmidt, who has been much derided and recently removed from TikTok, essentially for enjoying being slender. From all I have been able to read, she did not advocate for extreme eating habits. She also did not criticize anyone for how they wanted to look. She just said she is happier when she is smaller and gave eating tips, across all the food groups, of how she was able to keep weight off while working a less active job.

Now this really struck a chord with me because I have tolerated “skinny” comments for my entire life. The fact that I could lift almost 1-1/2x my body weight as a young adult, have never looked emaciated (although people would call me that), and always seemed to be active was lost upon all my critics. But like Liv Schmidt, I just prefer to be slender. There are many reasons, and they are my reasons, and it is not judgemental, yet the world feels free to judge *me* for living life the way I prefer.

It is exclusion by claiming inclusivity. And it is rampant in many different areas of our lives, on social media, in the news, in AI, etc. So how to handle it? You should have known—by perspective.

In Liv’s case, she has moved to other social media platforms, which is a shame because it seemed that she was a moderate voice for just being naturally fit, not obsessive, just living life the way you want. But she wasn’t interested in dominating her life view with a false narrative and moved away from the warped perspective about how she chooses to live.

It didn’t surprise me when I read about this. I, too, have been asked what I am trying to prove, can’t I just relax and eat like everyone else for a change, or I deserve to treat myself well sometimes too (as if feeling comfortable isn’t treating myself well), and much more, including the requisite threats from bullies which taught me a lot, and has served me well.

In my case, I have just ignored the false perspective, and kept my self-perspective focused on my health and my perspective of living a happy and healthy life, and carried on. That is one of the main reasons for keeping a healthy and positive perspective in life, both about the world in general and about yourself.

Society has trouble when people live differently than “normal” but seem to succeed. A good portion of society will be threatened by that alone, which is where many of the prejudices and harassment comes from. But perspective is a part of your personality. Your perspective is a very personal thing, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of wanting to live your life to your fullest, no matter how you define that. So live your life with confidence, I encourage your positive perspective, and your desire to be the best possible you in whatever ways matter to you.

That's it for the evening. Remember to keep your perspective of the world, and of yourself, positive whenever possible. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but the rewards are worth it. Your positive perspective will help you to moderate your reactions to life’s unexpected events, and will also help you when you are trying to make positive changes in your life. Never give up on yourself, and stay true to your vision and your goals!

Your homework (always optional) is to think about your perspective on some topics in your life, and try to decide if they are positive or not. Extra points if you think about how other people have reacted to your perspective and if they tried to dissuade you from your viewpoint, and how did those challenges make you feel? Did it make you doubt yourself? Or help you to realize that your perspective is part of your personality? It is fine to be comfortable with yourself!

Please remember the many wars happening in the world. In Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and everywhere there are disasters or suffering. If you are able and interested, the page of Ukraine donation links is still up at UKR7.com. Remember and pray for the aid workers from World Central Kitchen. They are totally humanitarian, providing meals for people in need. They're at WCK.org.

Remember that one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. As always, thank you for stopping by! If you found something interesting or useful please pass it along and please subscribe and hit that like button, and if not, please drop me a comment as to what you would like to hear. 

Have a great week! Remember to live the life you dreamed of because that is the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone and see you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.