Perspective!

Somewhere, in a dusty box in the attic of my mind, is a quote which goes something like this:

Perspective isn’t everything… it’s the only thing!

Oddly, when I tried to look it up and find the source, I discovered this, instead:

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions – Stephen R. Covey

Today feels a lot like that!

There are about 92 zillion things jumping up and down for my attention. (Well, it feels like that many!)

And a whole lot of those things have voices attached to them. Voices trying to tell me that their particular thing should obviously be the first thing on my list.

One of those things was showing up for my 15 minute daily date with myself in Zoom land with a cool group of fellow travelers on the way way from here to getting “IT” done.

It’s a really helpful tool.

Except, I didn’t get there.

In fact, I got lost. I literally couldn’t remember where the link to the meeting was stashed.

And, since I’m being real, I got pissed. Which the therapist who lives inside me knows is often code for scared.

Then, I yelled at myself for a bit. I mean, really… how could I be so clueless???

Then, I thanked my hot water and lemon for playing and turned to the cacao stuff I’d been “saving” for a special moment.

As I sipped, I heard dusty words in my head. Stephen Covey explaining his 4 quadrant planning tool which says, basically, that any one thing on our lists is two of these four things:

Urgent/non-Urgent/Important/non-Important

The challenge is to figure out which two are true for whatever the thing in question might be.

It turned out that not making it to my meeting was nonUrgent AND nonImportant!

Now I’m not dis-ing the meeting. The meeting is great! Cool people all doing things that matter to them.

And, it was already over for the day. Shaming and blaming myself wasn’t going to change that!

And, there are lots more 15 minutes left!

So… I did one of my favorite things and asked a new question!

What IS important/urgent that I could do instead, NOW?

Imagine this… there were several options jumping up and down to be noticed!

The one I picked, first, was to hunt up the Legendary Husband and ask for a hug. Then, I told him that I’d had another morning of sad-dog dreams, because I really needed to be heard.

Next, I sent an email… asking for a reminder of how to find the meeting in the future, which was important/close-to-urgent, as it happens I am the leader for Friday!!!

Then, I fixed some food. And listened to Joan Baez, who is really good at the important/urgent thing, even if she doesn’t know Stephen Covey!

And, then, I decided I might not be the only one who could use this story today!

And, then, I had an inspiration. Did you notice that the photo at the top is kind of unusual for me? I mean, it’s one of my paintings but it’s in black & white!

It needed a bit of cropping and I almost took the bottom part off, too. And then I saw it!

We can still raise our hands – our power, if you will – on days that don’t feel all bright and colorful, IF we take care of ourselves, too!

Yep! Perspective/Perception shift with a big, gold bow!

Here’s the usual view… about to become leggings!!!

And, just in case you’re wondering… I totally re-did today’s list and crossed a couple things off, already. Next up… nap! No shaming and blaming. Just learning!

ps… one of those things I already crossed off was 15 minutes of practicing my PT exercises for successful suitcase wrangling!!! Kids and ancestors are on the calendar!

pps… what if I offered you 3×15 minutes to shift something holding you back? It works, and it’s my gift to you. If you’re interested, ask the calendar elves to hook you up… and do it soon!