“New life comes from a new mind and a new way of looking at your life” TD Jakes.

Corrective Lenses

Is there a specific person, teacher, friend, or parent who had a transformational impact on your life? Who helped you unlock your potential? It took me about two decades to fully appreciate the impact of my second-grade teacher on me. Her words of encouragement, welcoming personality that made me feel valued, and her reassuring smile that made me know that my second-grade exams weren’t the end of the world, had a great impact on my life than I realized at that time. It’s because of her that I wear eye glasses

My glasses are a constant reminder of a teacher who believed in me at a very tender age. Thanks to her genuine interest in me, at a time when there were no preschool-eye check-ups, she realized that I had vision challenges and recommended me for an eye checkup. Correction in my vision transformed my life. With my performance improved, my self-esteem and confidence soared. While the prescription glasses corrected my physical vision, her words of encouragement and great personality acted as my corrective lenses of my mental sight. Knowing that you need corrective lenses is the first step to elevate your perspective.

Questions: Unlocks Possibilities

“The power to question is the basis of all human progress” Indira Gandhi noted. It is interesting that the older we grow, the less we ask questions. We accept the systems and paradigms of the way things have always been done. We don’t question the status quo, even though we are sick and tired of it. We accept our lives instead of creating our lives. I have learned that questioning is a surprisingly powerful tool for breaking new ground in our personal lives and in the society at large. We unlock value when we ask questions.

After my vision was corrected, I realized that I was as gifted as other kids and my grades weren’t the true reflection of my potential. I started believing of a greater destiny. This led me to start asking focused questions on how to grow into what my new perspective brought into view. If fixing our sight is the first step to elevated perspective, then asking the right questions is the next step to raising our perspective and unlocking new possibilities in our lives. In their book The One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan summed up the power of questions by stating, “How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our lives”

In today’s post, we will look at three ways of elevating our perspective after putting on the correct lenses and asking the right questions. Let’s get started: –

Know Thyself

“The unexamined life is not worth living” ~ Socrates. Often people go through life without ever realizing what was possible. They go through life with poor self-image and low self-esteem because they failed to see the value in them. The quote from Socrates hints at how to live a worthy life. It begins with looking in the mirror; self-awareness. Self-awareness is the key to knowing ourselves. A person who isn’t conscious of their potential, capacity, and giftedness will always have a poor perspective of themselves and their environment. Being self-aware means knowing what God created you with and what He created you for.

A person who isn’t conscious of their potential, capacity, and giftedness will always have a poor perspective of themselves and their environment.

Knowing yourself elevates your perspective because to know yourself will require you to raise your view of who you are, above your current conditions. The moment you look at yourself beyond your present performance and the challenges you’re facing, you soon start to realize that you can do better because you were created for more. When this happens, your self-value will appreciate. With higher self-value, comes elevated perspective. Soon you start realizing how you view things starts to change. Your environment becomes better and the people around get a new higher meaning. So, the first way to elevate your perspective is to know yourself, which begins with self-awareness.

Seek Wisdom

A young king took over his father’s kingdom at a time when the kingdom was facing both internal and external conflicts. Without much experience, he knew that he needed more to rule a divided kingdom with many foes. Fortunately, God appeared to him in a dream and told him that whatever he asked for, he would be given. Weighing his inexperience as a leader and the task of ruling his people, he knew he needed something to help him see better. Without hesitation, he asked for wisdom. In the end, he was the wisest and wealthiest king who ever lived. His success attracted rulers from other regions to learn from his great wisdom.

Like the young king, we can agree that sometimes life brings challenges that we lack enough experience face. Other times, we face decisions that require more wisdom. Somehow, we know that if we were wiser on how we lived we would be better off and could have done some things better. Wisdom is the gateway to an elevated perspective. It enables us to see beyond the surface and clears the smog that clouds our decision-making process. We get wisdom when we seek it. I believe the true source of pure wisdom is God. When we seek it from Him, he gives us wisdom that’s not gained from books. His wisdom enables us to have a higher standard of living and increase our odds of being successful.

Wisdom enables us to have a higher standard of living and increase our odds of being successful.

Invite Others

I was once very bitter with a friend of mine. I had found out that they had said somethings about me that weren’t true. The bitterness was pushing me to confront him in the most unfriendly way possible. Can you relate?  Before I confronted him, I met with one of my mentors and shared my predicament. In the meeting, my mentor, through her wisdom, systematically enabled me to look at the issue with a new perspective. The new perspective was higher than what I had before sharing with her. The elevated perspective allowed the bitterness to evaporate and I chose to forgive and let go of what my friend has done. That day I learned that when we invite the right people in our world, they improve our outlook.

Nothing will elevate your perspective like surrounding yourself with eagles: people with elevated perspective. The old adage, “Two heads are better than one” is a reminder of what happens when we come together. When we share our viewpoint with positive people, we improve our outlook. They fit us with corrective lenses and equip us with great questions that allow us to see things from an eagle’s view. Build what I call a think-tank. A group of friends who are your to-go-place for brainstorming. Have mentors and coaches who will help you when the stakes are high. And remember inviting others is like having compound eyes that broaden your field of view.

When we invite the right people in our world, they improve our outlook.

What’s Next….

We have come to the end of this series on how to elevate our perspective. The task at hand is now to identify an area in your life that needs better perspective. It could be a broken relationship, a dormant project, or a stagnant life in general, but whichever the area, I want to promise you that as you elevate your perspective, that area will get better.