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A Perspective: You can’t get better by reading the instruction on the side of the medicine, bottle at some point you have to take the medicine

Paraphrased from “How to Transform Your life” by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

The Three Keys to Wisdom (Perspectives)

Perspective. Have you ever scratched your head, felt stuck ,was all knotted up and just didn’t know how to proceed? You may have asked a mentor / coach for support and whilst that helped, it still felt that there was some information missing.

This where the “Three Keys to Wisdom” come in and can help find a solution. The keys are our natural ability to view things from another perspective. Often problems are only problems when we are viewing things from just one perspective, sometimes its because me are only seeing things from our own point of view, other times we are seeing too much from another’s point of view.

One of the reasons we are stuck in that one perspective is that there is some sort of emotional content attached to that point of view. That emotional content comes from the emotional mind, i.e. from the fight, flight or freeze response. It’s prime directive is to keep us safe, however when the response is no longer appropriate (i.e. it is causing us some difficulty) then we need to take action to unstick ourselves. To do this we need to create some movement in our way of thinking. One great way of doing this is by moving our attention to different perspectives.

Willingness to try a different perspective

Of course there has to be some willingness / motivation to do that. That willingness comes from many sources, here are three that get us into action:

• If the pain (i.e. negative consequences) of staying where we are is significant, then often we are motivated to take action. That could be to try a different perspective.
• When the reward (positive consequences) for making a change is greater than the perceived difficulty of taking action, we take action. That action could be to try a different perspective.
• When we choose to take small manageable actions towards making change, we find ourselves taking action. (Note often the difficulty to taking action is that the step forward is too great).

Natural Ability to step into a different perspective

As children we were really good at taking on different perspectives. Think back to when you was a child and imagined being an astronaut, or a dancer, a pop stars, sports person, a health professionals (doctors, nurses). You didn’t just imagine being those people, you actual were them, fully embodying them.

Actors do that when they step into a role or as adults we taken on roles parent, partner, friend. We also step into the shoes of the people we care about.

We also step into the shoes of the people we care about and notice what is going on for them.

So we have that natural ability.

Using a different perspective

So a great way to get unstuck is to see a problem or a challenge from a different perspective. There are many perspectives, three of the primary ones are:

• 1st Position – This perspective is viewing things through your own eyes.
• 2nd Position – This perspective is viewing things through someone else’s eyes.
• 3rd Position – A dispassionate perspective, sometimes known as the observer (fly on the wall) or anthropologist perspective.

When we step into each of those perspective we regain information, a more whole picture of the problem / goal. Often when we have the whole picture the solution comes to us.

The Disney Model

One of my favourite perspective models is the Disney creative process model shown above (modelled by Robert Dilts). The creative process can be divide into three rooms. In the Disney creative process the project (film) under development is taken into each room and scrutinised by using only the perspective of that room.

• DREAMER – This room is full of dreamers who are able to imagine and dream without restrictions.
• REALIST – The second room only looks at practicality and what needs to happen to make it real.
• CRITIC – The third room is for critics and only looks to find faults and looks for pit falls.

After all three rooms have contribute, the likelihood is that a strong product is produced. Walt Disney is testament to the model’s success.

Try it yourself

If you want understand act. So try out the process for yourself.

• Think of a goal you want to achieve, maybe one you are feeling a little stuck with.
• Take three bit of paper and on one write DREAMER, on one write REALIST and on the other CIRITIC. Place the pieces of paper onto the floor in a triangle pattern, spacing them apart so that you can step on one of the pieces of paper without touching another.

DREAMER

• With the goal in mind step onto the DREAMER piece of paper. With the dreamer mindset and nothing else think about the goal and image everything positive about the goal. What it will look like, feel, sound like, who would be there etc. etc. etc. write it down.
• Step off the Dreamer space and shake off that dreamer mindset and return to a neutral state.

REALIST

• Taking the Goal in mind and step onto the REALIST piece of paper. With the realist mindset only think about all the practicalities of the goal, what needs to be in place, people, environment, capabilities, skills, logistics etc.etc.etc. Write them down.
• Step off the Realist space and shake off that realist mindset and return to a neutral state.

CRITIC

• Taking the Goal in mind and step into the CRITIC piece of paper. With the critic mindset only think about all the faults and pitfalls and impracticalities and risks etc.etc.etc. Write them down.
• Step off the Critic space and shake off that mindset and return to a neutral state.

NEUTRAL

• From the neutral state look at each mindset and notice anything else that would be useful to notice.
• Take all the information gained and come up with a plan and a vision of that goal.

Note: That is just one pass of the Disney creative process. Once you have done it, its worth repeating as it is an iterative process the more you do it the more clarity you will get.

Diversity

Teams benefit from having members that have diversity of perspectives, not only because of the insights that they bring to the team and any endeavour, but it also ensures that everyone’s input is valued, which supports engagement.

Conclusion

When we study different change processes, whether it’s NLP, parts work, the various psychological models such as the transactional analysis model (adult, child, parent) we find that one of the key elements of their process involves taking on different perspectives.

Whilst it is fine to understand the purpose of viewing different perspectives and see the benefit of that action, knowledge is not enough, sometime we need to take action and do the exercise. As the quote at the start suggests, we need to take the medicine in order to make change in our lives. Taking action is the difference that makes the difference.

So let that be a perspective that it can be useful to be stuck in, and that is taking small actions and see things from different point of views.

Trying out different perspectives falls into the category of “positive action” in the solution focused hypnotherapy 3P strategy (positive action, positive interaction, positive thought). When we do the 3P’s we create serotonin which gives us that wellbeing feeling, which helps us relax and think more rationally and come up with new solutions.

Accreditation:National Council of Hypnotherapy (NCH), Association of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy (AfSFH), Association of Neuro-linguistic Programmers (ANLP)