My Healing Started With A Change in Perspective

So much of life is about perspective. I used to not understand this. I used to not understand how much weight it had when people would say you have two options: you can either look at the glass half full or the glass half empty. I never understood how profound this really was.

One of the biggest things that helped me go from where I was to where I am today is the perspective change that I had. I used to see myself as a victim. I used to think I had no agency in making things happen for myself. It's ironic because I thought I could control things that were out of my control, but I put no effort into controlling the things in my control.

Probably because of the effort it would have taken to actually take action to make changes in my life. I didn't like putting in effort where I didn't know what the outcome would be. I liked studying because I knew if I studied, I would do well. But around the idea of healing, there were so many unknowns.

Someone once said something to me that changed my life, I've probably already written about it and honestly, I will probably write about it again. What happened to me wasn't my fault but it is my responsibility to heal from it. How unfair is that? So unfair. But the truth is, sometimes life is unfair. That doesn't change the reality of that statement. If I continued to live with a victim mentality and continued to hope that some miracle was going to happen, then nothing ever would have changed.

My perspective changed from life was happening to me to the fact that I had agency in my own life. This was a major shift.

I finally started to take responsibility for my actions. I finally stopped blaming others for the circumstances of my life. It was finally time for me to make some changes, to take action. I could either continue to see the cup half empty or I could start to see the cup half full.

Another major perspective shift that I had to work through was the idea that nothing that anyone else did was personal. It sounds extreme, but I've learned it to be the truth. No matter what. Even if someone were to come up to me and punch me in the face, it is not reflective of the person I am. More so it is a reflection of that person and the things they are dealing with and their internal state. Rather than experiencing anger in that situation, I have worked towards experiencing compassion for the pain and the suffering that that person is going through.

This didn't change over night though. It took a long time. At first, I didn't even believe it. It didn't make sense. What do you mean if someone comes up to me and punches me in the face it's not personal? Of course it's personal.

Eventually, I came to understand it intellectually. Okay, I can understand that if someone does something to hurt someone else, it usually has someone to do with the way that the perpetrator is feeling on the inside. While I might understand it, the feelings did not follow along with this idea. This is something I have talked about a few times, but often times we first need to identify the intellectual reasoning behind something and then as we continue to experience it, we allow our feelings to follow. It's a process.

To tie things together, this idea also allowed me to step out of the victim role that I was in. If I was able to understand and feel the fact that people were not doing things to me as a reflection of who I was, then maybe I didn't need to feel like I was bad or faulty or not good enough as a result of my life circumstances. This can also go the other way though. I needed to take responsibility for my actions and recognize that I was acting out of a place of hurt rather than acting this way because of someone else or because of my life circumstances. I wasn't angry at the person that made fun of me because they weren't nice, I was angry because of the feelings this brought up inside of me. This person also didn't make fun of me because I am bad, it is because it would make them feel better about themselves.

There are so many different perspectives we can take on life. Giving other people the benefit of the doubt and allowing ourselves to have compassion for them can take us out of a victim role and into a role of understanding. Sometimes these perspective changes don't happen right away, but as long as we allow ourselves to be open to new ideas, we can continue to learn from others and continue to grow. We don't need to stay stuck in our cognitive patterns forever. We can grow out of them. We can change them.