I watched a video this morning where people put on glasses and are able to see color for the first time. Watching their shock as they experienced color for the first time, moved me deeply. Virtually all of them started crying within moments, overcome by the vision of a world they’d never fully been able to experience.
I sobbed. Legit wept my eyes out.
They knew they were missing out, but didn’t exactly know how much. They had never fully experienced color so they had no idea just how wonderful a colorful world is.
And something deeper stirred in me while watching this video. We get so stuck in our patterns and limiting beliefs and habits and negative mindsets that we have no idea what we’re missing out on. We’ve allowed heartache and circumstances and an old teacher’s critical words to hold us back. We’re colorblind to possibilities that pop up in red and orange and yellow and purple and green. We’ve become so used to seeing the world in black and white—familiar with the sound of our excuses or the sensations of our pain or the labels we’ve affixed to ourselves—that we have absolutely no idea how brilliant and vibrant the world could be if we simply had a different perspective.
We’ve grown comfortable in our ignorance because “you can’t see what you can’t see”.
But what would happen if someone were to hand us a pair of EnChroma glasses that suddenly enabled us to see the world in color? That suddenly allowed us to look at our situation with hope? That suddenly allowed us to realize possibilities and solutions and dreams are out there, right in front of our eyes?
Fear, pain, and hopelessness all tell a dismal story:
“This is as good as it gets.”
“You’ll always struggle.”
“You’ve always been poor, you’ll always be poor.”
“You’ll never be healthy.”
“You can’t have a job you love that pays well.”
“If I’d only come from a different family…”
And so on and so forth.
But what if the thing you actually need is a change of perspective?
We often want our physical realities to change, when what we actually need is our internal reality to change. When we stop looking at the world with tunnel vision focused on our lack, but expand our view, we realize that lack is temporary. Pain is temporary. Struggle is temporary.
Other people, in far worse situations than you or me, have overcome massive obstacles and gone on to do astounding things because they changed their internal reality which, in turn, affected their external reality.
Our beliefs massively impact our lives.
I am in no way invalidating pain or trauma (and it’s imperative that we learn how to give pain a voice in order to heal), however we cannot wallow in pain or lack and expect to thrive. We have to change what we’re looking at. We need to swap our glasses of hopelessness and fear and put on glasses of hope and possibility.
A change in perspective is available to you. And inside of you is the power to access it. Invite the presence of hope to come and shift your perspective and watch what happens.
Why wait to see the world in technicolor? Please don’t.
Katelyn Alexander 