Ways of Seeing
A Guide to Perception Shifting
1
Broadly speaking, what do we all want? Freedom, strength, self-understanding, meaningful work, rewarding social lives, a loving partner, supportive families, a sense of dignity, clarity, calm...
Instead, what do we regularly live with? Internal blocks, varieties of instability, self-confusion, career questions, loneliness, romantic troubles, challenging families, feelings of inadequacy, doubt, fear...
This is OK. Having a distance between our ideals and reality is part of the human condition - and our shortcomings are often our greatest source of growth. This sounds like a paradox, but it isn’t: awareness of what’s lacking guides us towards necessary change.
While I don’t have a single, definitive strategy for bridging the gap between “what could be” and “what is”, I do believe there’s a universal first step to set us on a path to better managing dissatisfaction. Here’s a clue:
“The land will return what’s planted… the mind lives in what it sees.”
2
The history of philosophy is a lively interplay of ideas: theses, anti-theses, syntheses, combinations, spin-offs, axioms, derivatives, etc. This back-and-forth has taken great thinkers in fascinating directions, and yet, there’s one area where little has changed, and the wise remain in unanimous agreement:
Buddha: “The mind is everything... what you think, you become.”
Marcus Aurelius: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”
Goethe: “Man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is what he thinks about all day.”
Anais Nin: “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
The collective conviction is that our lives are a giant Rorschach test (they reveal the viewer, not the view), and our experience is shaped by the patterns of our thinking (our glass half-full and half-empty inclinations).
To boil down the self-help canon into something that fits on the back of a postcard, a key step is taken when we stop asking “What do I see?” and begin asking “How am I looking?”
What am I doing with my mind? What level of hope, energy and imagination am I bringing to bear on the scene in front of me? Is it making the moment easier or complicating it? Will it bring me closer to what I want or take me further away?
Perception shifting is a cornerstone skill to acquire, and understanding how to look at things from slightly different angles makes all the difference with regard to attitude, potential and change.
Every time we watch rather than react, we become a little less defined and a little more free to be something different. Every time we recognize a low thought and replace it with something that has light in it, something happens - we begin to believe in our mind’s ability to free us.1
3
The Inner Act is a formula, and it looks like this:
the same scene
+ a different thought
= a different emotion
I know it sounds simple (and we love to resist simple things), but try it. Take whatever upset you’re harboring, plug it in and point your perception in a healing direction. A single shift is all you need to prove the value of the practice, but it's a tool you can use to great effect for the rest of your life.2
Here are a few of my favorites:
I believe someone has wronged me…
+ “
… I’d like to attack back”=
Anger, Defensiveness, Hostility+ “… let me use this to learn what forgiveness is”
= Serenity, Maturity, Composure
I experience unexamined envy…
+ “
… my life is substandard”=
Sadness, Shame, Inadequacy+ “ … let me turn this into focused admiration”
= Generosity, Humanism, Inspiration
I feel burdened by my ambitions…
+ “
… time is running out”=
Stress, Despair, Paralysis+ “… let me separate the essential and inessential”
= Presence, Clarity, Purpose
Start small. Identify a line of thought that is bothering you (this should be easy; you probably already have a few in mind). Now interrupt it. Say to yourself, “I don’t have to think and feel this way.” Then think of something - anything - that has a measure of love in it.3
If a thought can take you away from peace, a thought can bring you back to it. Its only qualifications are that it allows you to be more tolerant of - and happier in - the present moment. Any gentle thought can do this.
I’ll end with a little story:
Isabelle was eleven years old, and she was in the artist Agnes Martin’s apartment. There was a rose in a vase, and she was mesmerized by it. Agnes saw that and picked it up. She asked Isabelle, “Is this rose beautiful?” Isabelle said, “Yes, the rose is beautiful.” Then Agnes put the rose behind her back, and asked again, “Is the rose still beautiful?” and Isabelle said, “Yes, it’s still beautiful.” Then Agnes told her, “You see, the beauty is not in the rose. The beauty is in your mind.”
Stay relaxed but precise. You don’t need fight your mind, you just need to observe it. When something doesn’t please you, you can calmly question the meaning you’ve given it and replace it with a new - softer - interpretation.
This activity should carry no pressure whatsoever. There’s nothing to check off or turn in. Have a notebook nearby if you want to, but let go of any sense of obligation to use it. Give yourself permission to practice easily. The exercise should feel good, like inhaling fresh air after having been in a stuffy room.
The way to make progress is to practice, and the way to practice is to turn it into play. Have fun with it. Call it “Buddha math’, “drift correction”, “what heals vs what hurts” or whatever you need to make it sound a little less serious. Do that and take a “the world is a classroom” approach with this intention:
Everything that happens today is my curriculum. Every person I meet and every situation I encounter is an opportunity to learn, heal and grow.
Image Credits:
Casa BHMM, JI Architects, Altea, Spain 2016
Moments of Perfection, Agnes Martin, Sorol Art Museum 2024