18 February 2008
Changing Your Point of View
Posted by Terrie Soberg under: General .
How can we apply this insight to our blog and our view of the political landscape? Any thoughts?
Now You Can Enjoy Yourself Every Day
People are often puzzled by the idea of making life more enjoyable by changing their viewpoints. Let’s examine it:
Suppose you are not feeling well one day, yet you accompany some friends on a leisurely drive through the beautiful countryside. Someone calls your attention to a lovely lake, but because of your illness, you cannot give it your attention or interest. Someone else remarks about a magnificent mountain in the distance, but you hardly hear him. You pass one lovely scene after another, yet they have no meaning to you. Because your illness has taken all your energy, you have none to spare in enjoying yourself. It is the same to your mind as if these natural beauties didn’t exist at all. In your present ill state, they have neither existence nor attraction.
But the next day you recover. You feel fine. There is no inward attention to anything; you are outward bound once more. So again you go on a drive; you visit the very same places. But now, everything is completely different. You enjoy the lovely lake and magnificent mountain. You respond to them. You enjoy yourself.
How come? It was the very same scenery both times. But on the second trip you were different. You saw everything in an entirely new way. You had the inner freedom to see and appreciate your outer world. Like magic, your changed mental viewpoint changed the world for you.
It is difficult for people to grasp that the very same principle holds true elsewhere in life. Yet it is absolutely so. When we are inwardly ill at ease we do not really see things as they are; we see them as we are. And there is a world of difference - an actual world of difference - in the two viewpoints.
As we elevate our mental view points we also elevate our world. How is this accomplished? Enjoyment results from discard, not from acquisition. Discard of what? Of the very things we really want to lose - our acquired negative attitudes.
Enjoyment of life is not the presence of something outside ourselves; it is the absence of something within ourselves. Gloom is a state of inner blockage of your True Self; enjoyment is its release. Just as a balloon rises to greater heights by discarding weights, so do we ascend as we toss out negativities.
Vernon Howard
From Psycho-Pictography
6 Comments so far...
Sharon Anderson Says:
18 February 2008 at 9:38 am.
Thanks for this post. It is a great explaination of how and why we see (and hear) the world not as it is but as we are. It also helps us understand why communication can be difficult. Someone might hear something quite different from the words that we think are coming out of our mouths.
Angela Rogin Says:
18 February 2008 at 9:42 am.
I had read things like this but I never thought to apply it to politics. I guess it applies to everything and maybe understanding this will help me be more patient when it seems like people are blind to what is right before their face.
Mac Says:
18 February 2008 at 12:00 pm.
My point of view is much better because of you guys.
Carrie Says:
18 February 2008 at 12:34 pm.
I read this while listening to Rush. It is kind of funny because he is talking about Obama and his message of hope. People are flocking to him because he is giving them something to get excited about, hope. But this article talks about not seeing the world as it is and these people don’t seem to get it. We keep saying there is no substance to what he is saying. Well there is and it is called socialism. When Russia was so gloomy and depressed they jumped on the change band wagon and were easy to turn into communists. People don’t want to be sad and Obama is giving them something to be happy about, him. I saw a story about women feinting when he talks. Talk about making a king, sheesh.
Pickles Says:
18 February 2008 at 2:06 pm.
I like this because it talks about point of view but doesn’t act like everything is relative like my professors keep telling me. The beauty was there and it didn’t change. They just didn’t see it when they had a bad attitude.
Cavetrollhead Says:
18 February 2008 at 2:09 pm.
Don’t you know. Obama offers Change. He repeats it like a Barakan record. Doesn’t the word Change excite you?
You know that people get scolded to compare Obama to Hitler. But the analogy isn’t that he is a genocidal maniac. It is that he has a phenomenal ability to affect people he talks to. They say Napoleon was the same way. Hitler and Napoleon had a seemingly supernatural way of making people fall in love with them. Ring a bell?. But if people would just be calm and listen to what Barak is saying, despite their overwhelming feelings or infatuation, they should be very afraid.
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