A New Perspective
I’m going to share a fabulous way of boosting your wellbeing by gaining a new perspective. But first we’re going to rewind to a recent blog post about resilience.
In it I mentioned a great band called The Tears. They were only around for a short time but they burned brightly.
I went to see them in Hammersmith and the support was a very odd bunch called Guillemots.
To The Birds
Guillemots were one of those bands where you have to pick the diamonds from the rough, for me at least. But those diamonds are well worth the foraging.
They had one particular song that lurked in my head for months. Made Up LoveSong #43 was a particularly muscular earworm.
An earworm is a calque (go and look it up) from the German ohrwurm and it means a song that won’t leave your head. It describes perfectly those invidious tunes, some welcome, some less so, that burrow into your brain and reside there rent free.
Made Up Lovesong #43 enjoyed a tenancy in my head for what seemed like forever and two lines from it fascinated me.
“Now there's poetry in an empty Coke can” followed shortly by “Now there's majesty in a burnt out caravan”.
A New Perspective On Litter
Every time I saw an empty coke can in the gutter, which is more often than you’d think, I’d be reminded of that Guillemots line. It always made me look twice and gave me a new perspective.
Is there poetry in an empty coke can?
I’ve never yet seen a burned out caravan but now and again, especially on bike rides for some reason, you do come across carbonised shells of cars. Worryingly, sometimes still smouldering.
In their own strange way there is a majesty in a burned out wreck. The last time I passed one was while cycling from Greenwich to Redhill and my friend just had to take photos of it.
Looking at things from a new perspective and finding beauty in the everyday can help you boost your wellbeing, every day in fact.
It’s a simple trick that pays dividends but one that we overlook too often. In a minute I’ll share the imaginary prop you’ll need.
The trick also requires that you slow down, enough to take a second or third look at things you’ve seen a million times before.
Running To Stand Still
I’m running three times a week at the moment. No really! Patiently plodding around the same 5km circuit in an attempt to recapture glories long gone.
I pass through a relatively new but beautiful nature reserve that, although it is tiny, is attracting more and more birdlife (too far inland for guillemots).
There are a growing number of twitchers too, with high powered lenses, setting up camp to spot the rarer species but I’ve found that you don’t need a top of the range Canon to strike gold. You just need to look differently. You need to find a different perspective.
Yesterday I was taken aback by a beautiful bird with an incredible shimmering green head and vibrant blue splashes on its wings.
Okay, it was a common mallard. One of the most ubiquitous birds around - but the plumage around his head was amazing. Really stunning. I don’t think I’ve noticed that before, or not for a long time at least.
Flowered Up
In the next few months dandelions will be springing up in gardens (and driveways) everywhere and being cursed and mowed in equal measure by the lawn police.
If dandelions were a tad more rare and only flourished, say atop Himalayan glades and flowered their golden heads every fifteen years I’m sure the story would be different.
But they wouldn’t look any different. Their inherent beauty would not have changed but we would have a new perspective.
We could really benefit from taking a moment and recognising the beauty that’s already in our line of sight.
I developed a wellbeing idea called Holiday Spectacles. These aren’t sunglasses. They’re not even real specs, it’s just a metaphor, but they are a really useful tool.
Holiday Spectacles are simply the lenses you decide to view stuff through. And by stuff I mean your life.
The reason they work is this. When you’re on holiday you’ve already decided that everything is amazing.
The grass is greener, that’s why you’ve gone there. The sun is sunnier, the blue sky is bluer and so on.
Plus you’re naturally determined to have a lovely time (psychologically you need to justify the expense!) and point out to yourselves how amazing things are over here compared to the mundanity of where you normally are.
So you come back home with random photos of yourself standing next to a tree, simply because the tree looked nice.
These Pictures Of You
Go on, take a look through your old photos. I guarantee somewhere there’s an image of you standing next to a tree, or a fence, or a house, or in a street or by a field, that has no other redeeming qualities other than it was a nice day and you were on holiday.
Sure, the tree/street/fence on holiday does look nice but the thing is you wouldn’t do that when you’re at home.
Even though I’m sure there is a very attractive tree/street/fence very near where you live right now, you wouldn’t take a photo of it. Amiright?
But maybe you should. And that’s what wearing Holiday Spectacles can allow you to do. Take a wander through your neighbourhood and view it from a new perspective; a very different outlook.
Give yourself the opportunity to look again and to notice what’s already good where you are right now. Give yourself the opportunity to reassess and enjoy what you’re seeing.
This weekend try on a pair of Holiday Spectacles and take a local wander. Who knows what you might see with a new perspective.
You could find beauty in a swirling plastic bag, poetry in an empty coke can, or even majesty in a burned out caravan.
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