We took my mother-in-law to a Cubs-Brewers game in Milwaukee and had very different perspectives about the same event. At the end of the game, a Cubs player hit what looked to be a home run, but was caught inches from going out of the park. Half of the people in the stands were thrilled and the other half of us were disappointed. It was the same event and yet elicited such different responses because of our perspectives.
The stories we create around events lead us to take one action over another. We determine that something has significance and act accordingly, which leads to a cascade of reactions and judgments.
When have you judged yourself as wrong or not good enough? How many things do you avoid because you might fail, when a shift in perspective could make all of the difference? Is your pattern to make a decision, when it doesn’t work out as planned, judge that you failed, and decide never to risk that again? What if you began to be curious about things rather than framing them as right or wrong, good or bad?
To go back to the baseball analogy, a player is considered good when he succeeds one-third of the time. Think about that for a minute. If they are hitting .333 they are having a good season. What if you adopted the plan that when you fail you get really curious about it, tweak what you did and start again?
It’s a shift in perspective and it takes practice. It’s easier for many of us to judge ourselves as wrong than to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and be curious about how we might do it differently. What is one thing you could do today to see yourself more generously, from another perspective? Where could you give yourself a break and let go of the judgment that you are wrong? Play with this and let me know in the comments below what you discover.
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