Life provides everyone with the same thing: a mirror. Life is a mirror that reflects back to you your life circumstances and choices. We then decide and act based on our goals. Life is completely neutral. Life doesn’t pick and choose for us. However, we polarize life through the lens with which we perceive and interpret the world.
We define something to be good, something to be bad, something to be easyor something to be difficult. Our interpretation of the events in our life only exist for ourselves and within our own minds. Without being aware, what happens quite often is that one’s view of the world is quite narrow in perception and interpretation. We don’t recognize the lens through which we ‘see’ the world.
Failure only exists in the eye of the beholder. In the end, the only thing that matters is the actions we will take moving forward. But we allow perception to play a role in our lives and the role we allow it to play becomes deterministic in our lives.
The number of ways to interpret and perceive a situation is as different as people themselves. For example, imagine two people who start identical businesses that both fail within the first year. One person viewed the experience as a failure and this perception negatively affected their mood, their ability to get back up, keep going, and try again. The other person viewed the experience as a failure but was undeterred and went on to start another business that was successful.
So, perception only matters in terms of how it impacts one’s ability to continue to move forward. Failure, as seen through someone’s eyes can either be a motivating factor or a deterrent. For the person who is negatively impacted as a result of a ‘failed’ business venture, they may benefit from broadening their perspective when they interpret their experience. This won’t change the results but it will definitely provide an opportunity from which to learn, which can then be applied moving forward. Instead of beating themselves up and believing they are a failure it may help to reframe the situation and simply see the outcomes that they received were and are only feedback. Life IS feedback.
Life is always showing us, and reflecting back to us, the consequences of our decisions and actions. We must take this view if we are going to believe that WE are RESPONSIBLE for the course of our lives. If we don’t believe that our life’s results are not our responsibility then how will we ever believe we can change the course for our lives. If we don’t believe we can have an impact in the course of our lives then our opportunities in life really do get swallowed up into an abyss that we’ve created and cannot see our way out of.
Life is ONLY feedback. Our options and possibilities in life are truly endless. So, what can we do? Take a look at the feedback you’re getting in your life and where you want to be and what you want to have. Break things down into manageable steps and just start taking steps while paying attention to the feedback that you’re receiving. If judging your outcomes isn’t working for you then maybe it’s time to let go of the limiting perspectives that are no longer serving you and embrace the endless possibilities that actually exist for your life in every moment.
As always, Strive To Optimize.