What's Your Perspective?

Perspective is overrated. Reality has nothing to do with perspective. Pay attention to what's right in front of you.

 Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

Find the written versions of these podcasts on John's podcasting site: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1628038

"The Grasshopper" is the part of you that whispers pearls of wisdom that  seem to pop into your mind from out of the blue. John's essays and blog posts are his interpretations of these "Nips of Nectar." Others have labeled his writings as timeless wisdom. 

Most of the John's writings revolve around self improvement and self help. They address topics like:

• Mindfulness
• Peace of mind
• Creativity
• How to stay in the present moment
• Spirituality
• Behavior improvement

And stories that transform you to a wider sense of awareness that presents more options. And isn't that what we all want, more options? 

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Transcript

What's Your Perspective?

Let me ask you a question:

Is it better to be inside looking out, or outside looking in?

I think it depends on what you’re looking at.

Looking in usually means looking at the past. Looking out usually means looking toward the future.

And both have their advantages – and their traps.

The problem with looking back is wanting something that isn’t available anymore.

But there’s also value in looking back. You can see the patterns, choices, and behaviors that caused you to be where you are – and maybe change them.

Looking toward the future gives you hope. And hope can keep you moving.

The problem is that it’s easy to spend so much time imagining a better future that you never do anything to create it.

So we look back.

We look forward.

But right now is where the past and future meet.

And right now isn’t a perspective.

It’s reality.

And reality has an interesting quality: you can ignore it, but you can’t avoid it.

There’s a price to pay for ignoring what’s right in front of you.

But paying attention to it creates an opportunity.Because no matter what reality looks like, you still have the ability to respond to it.

And responding is different from reacting.

Reacting is doing what you’ve done before.

Responding is recognizing what’s happening now and deciding what to do about it. You get a say.

That distinction became very real to me years ago when I was in Kentucky doing a seminar.

The hotel had one meeting room, and that was the room we were supposed to use.

There was just one problem.

It was still filled with tables, chairs, and dirty plates from a wedding reception that had taken place days earlier.

I went to the front desk and explained that we had a meeting in that room in about four hours and it needed to be cleaned and set up.

The man behind the desk told me the hotel didn't handle that.

An outside company did.

And that company didn't work on Mondays.

Well, that was my reality.

And I wasn't happy about it.

I started getting frustrated. I was ready to explain how this wasn't supposed to happen, what our agreement said, and how somebody needed to fix this.

Then I caught myself.

I was reacting to how things should have been instead of responding to how things were.

So I looked at him and said:

“You're the only person here who can make this happen. I don't know who to call, but you do. Make the call. Let's make this happen now.”

Thirty minutes later, two people showed up and cleaned and set up the room.

Problem solved.

I could have spent hours arguing about how things should have been.

I could have talked about what the agreement said.

I could have complained about how things used to be handled.

None of that would have given me a meeting room.

Responding did.

And that's the difference between putting reality into perspective and actually dealing with reality.

You can look back and wish things were different.

You can look ahead and hope things will be different.

But neither one changes what is happening right now.

Right now is where you have some power.

So maybe the better question isn't:

“What's your perspective?”

Maybe it's:

“What are you going to do about what's right in front of you?”

Because perspective can help you understand your situation.

But response is what changes it.

All the best,

John