Do you Want Things to Change? … Change How you See Things

To break free of old ways and habits, we need to see things differently. But what is real?…. Here I share a powerful insight into Three Realities. When we look at each one, our perspectives shift and we are in a better position to make choices that bring about real change.

The First Reality: Mine

How I feel, and what I see and evaluate around me is My Reality.  It is the one that we have always had and has changed over the years as we have grown from childhood and absorbed more input and knowledge from the world around us. That input is usually from our own experience and how we feel when we do something, or how someone responds. However, we take in most from the messages our parents tell us as we figure out the world around us. This builds our beliefs about the world and our place in it. Our beliefs create the first reality.

By the time we are adults we have a whole bunch of assumptions,beliefs and interpretations of what is going on in our world. A lot of them are hand me downs and habits. It is only when we come to question them that we find out they may not be the truth after all.

The Second Reality: Yours

As adults we begin to realize that other people have a different reality from our own. Other people see things differently, want different things and apply different judgments and assumptions about the world and life. Other people are different from us. Now we have a choice at this stage – to learn and explore the differences or to decide that our way is the right way and theirs is wrong.

Whenever we apply a judgment against someone else it is a way of protecting and preserving ourselves and how we want to still see the world.

Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and seeing things from their perspective is a valuable skill in any interaction between people. It also opens up our hearts to feel empathy towards an other.

It is a powerful skill to be able to recognize how we are personally feeling and step back from it, and to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and see things from their perspective.

The Third Reality: The Observer

The last reality or perspective is when we are able to step back further and observe the 2 realities that are taking place. It’s as if we become the audience watching the movie that is going on in front of us. We become detached observers.

As observers we are able to step back from any situation. We can see what beliefs may be coming into play here, which are not the truth. We can rise above our emotional reactions and make better decisions. We come into the present moment with clarity.

In my experience, this is one of the most important things that I do as a coach. I’m a Third Reality Guide! I help my clients make the first shift from their own reality to the other person’s, and then share the reality I see as the Observer.

With practice we can all become observers in our lives and how we interact with others.

The first step is awareness. Whether you come across it in a blog post, training session, coaching call, meditation retreat or in a yoga class, its one of life’s lessons that will take you far …. and be content on the journey!