Abstract
How do we create inner wellbeing? In this article, we will explore the power that perception has on creating body, mind and spiritual wellbeing. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Wayne Dyer and Albert Einstein, we will examine how small shifts in our beliefs can create inroads for profound growth. We will explore how our thoughts and beliefs affect our experiences. We will also highlight the importance of cultivating a positive mindset. By examining one’s emotional “baggage” from past experiences, strategies to cognitively re-frame as a method to enhance mindfulness and well-being. Lastly, we will explore ways we can intentionally reshape our reality through the power of intentional thought and perception.
Table of contents
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer.
Early in my career, I was captivated by the psycho-spiritual perspective Dr. Wayne Dyer shared during his extensive exploration of human potential. He was more than a psychologist, he was a significant figure in the Self-Help movement. His ideas about self-direction are encapsulated in the quote above. It illustrates the profound impact a shift in perspective can have on shaping our day. This is a fundamental concept in cognitive psychology, as our thoughts and perceptions play a crucial role in our wellbeing. As the Greek saying goes, ‘Carpe-Diem’ or ‘Seize the Day.’
When I read this citation, I also cannot help but fathom the deeply profound wisdom offered by Dr. Albert Einstein, who tells us:
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”
Albert Einstein
Both kernels of wisdom remind us that our perspectives hold immense power. They shape not just our internal and external environment. They also influence our ability to effect real change. Our thoughts and feelings can create tangible outcomes in the world around us. This happens when they are channeled through intentional action. These outcomes empower us to take control of our well-being.
If the universe is hostile, one perceives threats in many, if not most, directions. If the universe is friendly, one increases their chance to form healthy interpersonal relationships. These relationships form the foundational building block for human development.
Yet, if someone prescribes a pessimistic ideology without creating space to see the positives that an optimistic outlook can bring, can one really ever muster the internal environment needed? We must create space to see the positives. From that perspective, can one develop and cultivate a sense of personal well-being?
Wellbeing & The Power of Perception
Albert Einstein is most notably known for the General Theory of Relativity. I do not profess to know the mathematics behind this theory or how it shapes the universe’s natural laws. Yet, I understand from an experiential level that universal energies are symbiotic. They act relative to one’s internal and external environment. They can create avenues for exponential growth in one’s physical or emotional health. Alternatively, these avenues can lead to a decline in one’s overall mental health and wellbeing.
Social wellbeing creates a wake of energy trailing the wayward traveler. The longer the time we travel, the larger the wake will be. The greater the energy we put towards the destination, the larger the wake will be. This wake is formed by the weight of one’s past baggage. These include beliefs, experiences, perspectives, or even biases. One forms these to create internal and external representations of the world. We cannot escape this. It is rooted in our past. It grounds our present moment to how we learned to perceive internal and external realities. Yet, while we may not be able to shift the external world, we can do our part. We can shift our internal representations of such a world.
The General Theory of Relativity gives insight into how people can form very different perspectives about the same situation. This is shaped by that wake of baggage one carries with them in the present moment. Yet the past exists separately from the present moment. It does not need to affect one’s future prospects, mainly if one can control the present moment.
If the wake of past deeds is too deep, we must take corrective action. It could be significant enough to capsize the ship. It might drown the captain who steers it. Sometimes, overcoming past hurts and misperceptions is needed. This helps categorize their presence. They need not overwhelm the present moment. They also do not rob one of their future. Our emotional wellbeing is dependent on compartmentalizing and overcoming past hurts.
In cases such as this, it is imperative to determine if the wake is what drives the ship. This simple visualization exercise prompts the psyche to put perspectives into their proper place. Past perspectives can shape our view of current events. If we take cognitive psychology at face value, we can modulate and modify our thought processes. This, in turn, modulates and modifies our emotional state. This process creates an ability to work through negative thought patterns and their emotional aftermath. It also negates the impact those more problematic ways of thinking or feeling can have on our present moment. This happens through the perspectives we assume. We must actively work through the negative thought patterns. We must address these processes to assure our physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.
Cognitive Behavioral Psychology, Egregious Emotions, and Stinking Thinking
Let us examine how we can decrease stinking thinking and how thought and emotion affect behavioral responses. Cognitive Behavioral Models of human action potential stipulate that thought affects emotion, behavior, and consequence. This cycle ultimately leads to new internal or external factors by which the cycle repeats itself.
Stinking Thinking and its Effects on Wellbeing
Have you ever woken up in a bad mood? I have, and I know that we all have. Did it shape your day for the better or the worse? This is a concrete example of how thought can shape our reality.
Negative thought patterns, often referred to as ‘stinking thinking,’ stem from our internal and external perceptions. Just as there are optimistic and pessimistic personality predispositions, some individuals may be more prone to viewing events through a negative lens. Some people have an optimistic personality while others are more pessimistic. This type of thinking, characterized by catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, and ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking, can lead to a more negative emotional state. While these negative states are a natural response to our need for personal safety, they can become pervasive. When they do, they can contribute to increased anxiety, depression, anger, and low self-esteem.
We often find ourselves trapped in negative thought patterns. This is especially true if they lead to emotional distress. It’s crucial to remember one thing. We have the power to shift our perception. Even when our primary lens is clouded by negativity, we can still find the flower in the field. It offers a glimmer of hope and optimism amidst the darkness.
The Egregious Emotion
When we engage in stinking thinking, we elicit an egregious emotional state. Have you ever heard of the saying, you are what you eat? What do you think your emotional state becomes when you feed yourself negative thoughts? Anxiety is a normalized state that keeps us safe. But if the universe is dangerous, where can we turn to refuge? While that anxiety can have positive or negative consequences, it is from that emotional state where deep-seated change through action can follow.
When anxiety is prevalent, it leads to anger if there is a fighting response. This is healthy, but only if the fight is constructive. One can fight towards a constructive or a destructive end. Should we fight for peace? Or should we foster peace? While this may represent a play on words, I cannot help but remember the profound wisdom from St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) who stated:
“I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.”
Mother Teresa
Can you see how a simple word shift can create an entirely different ideology? We, too, can create profound shifts through our emotional responses, especially if we honor and practice choosing our words wisely and implementing them with intent.
Lastly, the egregious emotion of depression and low self-esteem can also have positive connotations. To depress is to go within. If you did this, what hidden embers are present in the ashworks of your past? While low self-esteem may arise from this perspective, reframing creates foundations from which the ego can face tests to optimally develop a more positive mindset around oneself.
Reframe and Shift Your Perspective to Create Lasting Wellbeing
Wellbeing & The Cognitive Reframe
Cognitive reframing is a psychological technique that one can practice at home. In it, one examines, challenges, and shifts negative thinking schemas. Schemas can include long-term ways of thinking, especially from a biased perspective, or short-term views of a situation that may be emotionally laden.
Some schemas can be irrational or downright pathological. Others may be present for a good purpose; they keep you safe. While both are always present, it is vital to identify the weeds from the flowers. For when we learn to pick the weeds, we create room for one’s internal beauty to grow.
Reframing our minds is a complex problem. The mind will not first believe your attempts to shift its presence. It has developed storylines and a keen capacity for survival, even if they no longer serve a need. Instead, redirecting one’s thought processes takes practice and, even more importantly, setting up situations where your mind can begin to believe its newfound efficacy in thinking from an alternative perspective.
Shifting perspectives is no easy feat. It takes discipline and, more importantly, a degree of grit to face and ultimately overcome perspectives that may hold you back. While the work will be arduous and present, its reward will be uncanny if one endures the trials, tribulations, and tests necessary to begin shifting perspectives in a manner that elicits change.
Shifting Perspectives to Create Wellbeing
“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”
Mahatma Gandhi
If we are products of our thoughts, let us take a minute to become mindful of what we want to become.
There are many schools of psychology. Some will have you focus on the past to lessen its grasp on your current perspective. In theory, this creates the means for a person to become mindful of the moment. From this perspective, the goal is to create a more meaningful future where well-being can be a habit of focus rather than despair.
Other psychologies require one to focus only on the moment. By redirecting thoughts to the moment’s immediacy, one’s cognition becomes present-minded so that, again, one can dictate how the future arises, creating avenues for inner wellbeing to arise.
Lastly, other psychologies may have a person focus on the future. Through guided imagery and exploration of future dreams, one can dissect that future image in time by taking the immediate actions needed to make that vision a reality.
All of these psychologies have strength. All of them also have weaknesses. What psychology is most important to employ depends on the problems one brings to the forefront when one seeks to make behavioral change based on perspective.
If the nature of the problem is primarily past-oriented (the depressive position), the goal of the work should encapsulate the need to retell, re-experience from a cognitively neutral state, categorize, and overcome the unwanted storyline. If the nature of the problem is future-oriented, let’s say a person who dreams a million dreams but cannot implement one (the anxious position), the critical element for treatment will ultimately strive to create present action to move toward those dreams while handling problematic symptoms and the storylines they are attached to when they arise as an insult to treatment.
Untie current emotions to one’s past storyline. Create measurable goals for the future. Create mindfulness, which allows one to achieve meaningful advances through the capacity to shift one’s perspective.
Mindfulness Wellbeing, and Shifting Perspectives
Being mindful is essential to shift any perspective that may create emotional malaise. What is your feeling state? What is your overall mood? While emotions are transient experiences, your overall mood will give you an idea of your emotional state over a defined period. Emotions can vary in intensity, range, and combinations; they include anxiety, anger, sadness, euthymia (neutral), joy or happiness, and love. These are transient states that are not permanent. Yet when we learn to be mindful of our emotional or feeling states, we can determine our mood over time and manipulate that mood by developing systems for corrective action.
For those of you who have an iPhone, Apple Health can help you track your feelings and emotional state. Fitbit also has mood-related trackers that can help with this. Use these tools to monitor your emotional state, but avoid becoming obsessed with tracking. These tools will assist you in understanding your feelings over time. The more you become mindful of your feelings and what created them, the more access you will have to understand how you experience life. This provides insight into ways you can make small shifts in non-operational systems that can significantly affect the outcome of your life pursuits.
The Imaginal and Shifting Perspective
While mindfulness creates an opportunity for awareness, which, in turn, gives you the knowledge and, therefore, the power for self-direction, the next stage in creating a shift in perspective is to know what to do with that knowledge. So you are feeling stressed? Now what? How can you shift perspective, even in light of being mindful that the stress is there?
One way to do this is to use guided imagery to create the imaginal opposite of what is creating malaise. Are you feeling stressed about an argument with your spouse? Imagine its opposite and tie that into moments you may be grateful for. While this may seem foreign at first, with time, it should awaken gratitude, a critical aspect that can counteract the more negative feelings present.
Using time outs is a crucial aspect of shifting perspective. By giving yourself time, you allow the natural law of homeostasis to take place, allowing that which may be operating at an increased frequency to begin to die down. This is where the imagination can work its magic, giving you spontaneous images to take their natural course, creating avenues from which the unconscious can create an environment for internal well-being.
While imagery may be a more spontaneous and imaginal way to shift perspective, there is also the ability to engage consciousness through Socratic Questioning of what is being felt or thought of to shift one’s perspective. What is denying your wellbeing in the immediate moment? What is its opposite? Is a work conflict present? What can I do to find the middle ground? Is my perspective the only perspective, or does another opinion hold weight? Is there growth possible from adopting aspects of the differing positions? What are my absolute “though shalt,” and “though shalt not” (drawing boundaries).
The imaginal is a very powerful exercise for shifting perspective towards a more holistic state. It relies on a keen practice of mindfulness. Working the imaginal can shift perspectives consciously and imaginably towards a more significant state of well-being when used in conjunction with becoming mindfully aware.
Conclusion
Our perceptions are not merely passive lenses through which we view the world. They are active forces that shape our reality. Whether we perceive the universe as friendly or hostile, our thoughts and emotions reverberate outward, influencing our relationships, actions, and, ultimately, our well-being. Yet, as we have seen in this article, even though perceptions stand at the forefront of our emotional wellbeing, it is not difficult to get stuck in ways of perceiving the universe as a hostile place, even though that may not be the case.
By cultivating mindfulness and intentionally reframing our thoughts, we can harness the power of our perceptions to create a more positive and fulfilling life experience. While the journey towards shifting perspectives may be challenging, the rewards of increased well-being, both individually and collectively, are undoubtedly worth the effort.
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” (Wayne Dyer). The power to shape our reality lies not in changing the external world but in transforming our internal landscape. As we continue to explore the intricate relationship between perception, thought, and well-being, let us remember Gandhi’s words: “A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes.” If we are a product of our thoughts, and if we can change the way we perceive things, let me ask, what can we do at the moment to make our universe, and therefore our community, a safer space than we inherited?
Thank you for joining me here. I hope you enjoyed this article on shifting perspectives. Lastly, may your journey be guided by the beauty of your inner guide as you envision, chart a course, and advance confidently in the direction of your dreams.
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