“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
– Wayne Dyer
Great quote from a very quotable and inspirational teacher. Wayne Dyer is the guy whose writing started me out trudging this road to self improvement many years ago. His first best-seller (when I say “best-seller” I’m not making it up like too many people online do) “Your Erroneous Zones” flipped a switch in my head that quickly and decisively made the light come on.
I digress. What I want to do is talk briefly about that above quote and see if I can get you to thinking inwardly about what he said there. Hint: Dr. Dyer’s talking about your perspective.
Apply This Principle to Anything
We can easily take the quote and come up with some corollaries by simply changing a few words. Let’s try this:
“When you change the way you look at people, the people you look at change.”
Or substitute “a person” for people in that one and you can clearly see how you can easily transform a relationship, whether with a spouse, significant other or even a co-worker or boss.
Now let’s take a quantum leap and get to the real root of things:
“When you change the way you look at yourself, the self you look at changes.”
Read that again. It’s a very powerful statement.
Now think of how you would describe yourself TO yourself. NOT to someone else. What’s your self-talk like? Do you tell yourself you’re a winner or a loser? Failure or success? Worthy or not worthy of manifesting the life you’d like to have?
What’s Your Story?
What’s the story of ‘you’ that you tell yourself? Believe it or not, when you think about things, even yourself, you think in words, and the words you use make up your story. Think about that for a moment and if you don’t like the story you’re hearing, you might want to consider re-writing it.
I said a couple of paragraphs back that this is the real root of things. What I mean by that is that your story – your self-talk – will either enable or block your ability to change how you look at the world.
Examples: Low self-esteem tends to make people see themselves as victims and others as victimizers because they don’t see themselves as having any power over their own lives. Those lacking in self-respect seem to have trouble respecting others, and likewise don’t garner much respect FROM others.
To sum this up, how you see yourself and feel about yourself has a direct bearing on how you look at or see everyone and everything else. Heck, how you see LIFE!
And since the topic here is change, let me just say this: If you want to change your perspective on life and everything in it, you have to start by changing the way you see yourself.
Difficult? Not at all! Just find and use the right mind programing tools and you can effectively find a new you looking back in the mirror. And looking at the world anew.
Wishing you the very best,
Owen