The Power of Perspective
Choosing the Lens You Look Through
by: Chip Ingram
I know a great entrepreneur with the gift of making money. He built his own carpentry business—getting contract after contract from well-paying clients—and became a wealthy guy with a lot going for him.
By his own admission, he built his company while living as a backslidden, carnal Christian - morally decent, but rarely going to church, not spending any time in God’s Word, praying a little when it served his purposes, and not walking with God.
One morning, he received a call that his business had been burned to the ground in a fire by an arsonist. He had no insurance and lost a half-million dollars in materials alone. His contracts could not be fulfilled, his employees scattered, and he was left with nothing.
As would be the case with many people, my friend got depressed. He would stare out the window, dazed for hours at a time. He soon needed psychiatric help, and it took a long time before he could think straight again.
But being the entrepreneur that he was, he eventually rebounded. Within three and a half years he had rebuilt his business and was making a lot of money. Then one Saturday, one of his employees decided to help out by cleaning up the shop. He swept up all the sawdust, and then proceeded to clean out the welding gun. As he lit it, the sawdust caught on fire - and within minutes the whole building was going up in flames.
Again, everything my friend owned ended up in ashes. This time, he had a little insurance, but it wasn’t enough to cover this second half-million he had just lost. But his reaction in round two wasn’t the same as in round one. This time, he lined up a job for every one of his employees within forty-eight hours. And when he saw himself headed toward another round of depression, he was able to bring himself out of it. He actually had a positive attitude within days.
I knew that God had gotten his attention between fire one and fire two. I knew he realized there was more in life than carpentry, making money, and skiing at the most exclusive resorts. But his attitude was so different that I had to ask why. This is what he said:
I’ve been down this road before, and I understand what’s important. When I told my wife about the fire, she burst into tears and I had to make a choice. I could repeat history, or I could take advantage of the opportunity to do this right. So by a sheer act of the will, I decided to react differently. I took a little walk. By the time I got down our front steps, the words came to me, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Naked I came into this world, and naked I will return. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” As I walked around the block, I willfully chose to thank God for what I did have. Jesus had died on the cross for me, He saved me, He had given me a great family and a lot of success, and my generous, hardworking employee was just trying to help when this happened. In the big picture, I had really been blessed.
A Choice of Halves
My friend was a perfect illustration of a classic question: Is the glass half empty or half full? Life is really a series of answers to that question, and the answers are more than an indication of optimism or pessimism. How we look at a situation determines whether our emotions will send us spiraling upward or downward. And every time, our response is a matter of choice.
How can we live the kind of life that looks at the half-full side of relationships, work, marriage, children, and faith? By understanding the power of perspective.
If I asked you what your most painful, pressing difficulty is right now, what would you say? Marriage? Money? Depression? Lack of significance? Get your answer clear in your mind, and then consider the lenses through which you see this problem. Here’s a helpful formula to use when you look at your half-full, half-empty glass: C + P = E. Circumstances plus Perspective equals Experience.
Contrary to popular belief, your experience is not defined by your circumstances. It’s defined by how you see your circumstances. Like my friend who went through two almost identical tragedies, your perspective can make a powerful difference in the direction of your life.
Rising Above Your Circumstances
You can live above your circumstances if you let your perspective interpret your circumstances rather than letting your circumstances determine your perspective. For the most part, you have no control over your circumstances - the economy, people’s attitudes, the traffic, etc. You can’t change them. But you have complete control over your perspective. If C + P = E, you can only change E by changing P.
Focusing on the half-empty will take you in some very painful directions. Focusing on the half-full will take you in some very powerful directions. If you want your experience to improve, don’t focus on your situation. Focus on how you see it.
This is not a psychological gimmick; it’s a spiritual reality. Paul demonstrated that in his letter to the Philippians. His first trip to Philippi was pretty rocky (see Acts 16). Several times since, he had been beaten with the same brutality Jesus had experienced before the crucifixion, and now he was sitting in a dirty prison.
What kind of letter would you write? Mine would look like this: “I don’t know how much more I can take. There are rats in here, my wounds are infected, and people are telling lies about me. Please do whatever you can to get me out of here.” But Paul wrote about joy, gratitude, and hope. How?
Paul had perspective. He knew one of the most important keys to a spiritually fulfilling life: focus on Christ.
In every situation, we have three choices with regard to focus. We can look downward or upward, we can look inward or outward, and we can look backward or forward.
My letter to Philippi might have been downward, looking at visible, earthly evidence without regard to God’s power and purpose. It might have been inward, focusing on my hardship rather than its benefit to others. And it might have been backward, obsessed more with what had already happened than what God could do in the future.
Paul’s letter to Philippi was different. He was focusing upward: “I thank my God every time I remember you” (1:3), and, “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21), for example. He was focusing outward: “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (1:12), and, “The important thing is that in every way . . . Christ is preached” (1:18). And he was focusing forward: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (1:6), and, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death” (1:20).
Paul’s answer t whether the glass was half empty or half full made him joyful, not depressed - fruitful, not empty. It honored God.
Your perspective can have that kind of power, too. My carpenter friend experienced both: depression and emptiness after fire one, and joy and blessing after fire two. His business today is going great, he has a powerful testimony, and people ask him why he’s so content. He tells them that God is in control - He can allow things not only to burn down, but also to be built back up.
My friend, like Paul, has experienced the radical difference a perspective can make. And if you will look upward, outward, and forward, you can experience the difference, too.
by: Chip Ingram
I know a great entrepreneur with the gift of making money. He built his own carpentry business—getting contract after contract from well-paying clients—and became a wealthy guy with a lot going for him.
By his own admission, he built his company while living as a backslidden, carnal Christian - morally decent, but rarely going to church, not spending any time in God’s Word, praying a little when it served his purposes, and not walking with God.
One morning, he received a call that his business had been burned to the ground in a fire by an arsonist. He had no insurance and lost a half-million dollars in materials alone. His contracts could not be fulfilled, his employees scattered, and he was left with nothing.
As would be the case with many people, my friend got depressed. He would stare out the window, dazed for hours at a time. He soon needed psychiatric help, and it took a long time before he could think straight again.
But being the entrepreneur that he was, he eventually rebounded. Within three and a half years he had rebuilt his business and was making a lot of money. Then one Saturday, one of his employees decided to help out by cleaning up the shop. He swept up all the sawdust, and then proceeded to clean out the welding gun. As he lit it, the sawdust caught on fire - and within minutes the whole building was going up in flames.
Again, everything my friend owned ended up in ashes. This time, he had a little insurance, but it wasn’t enough to cover this second half-million he had just lost. But his reaction in round two wasn’t the same as in round one. This time, he lined up a job for every one of his employees within forty-eight hours. And when he saw himself headed toward another round of depression, he was able to bring himself out of it. He actually had a positive attitude within days.
I knew that God had gotten his attention between fire one and fire two. I knew he realized there was more in life than carpentry, making money, and skiing at the most exclusive resorts. But his attitude was so different that I had to ask why. This is what he said:
I’ve been down this road before, and I understand what’s important. When I told my wife about the fire, she burst into tears and I had to make a choice. I could repeat history, or I could take advantage of the opportunity to do this right. So by a sheer act of the will, I decided to react differently. I took a little walk. By the time I got down our front steps, the words came to me, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Naked I came into this world, and naked I will return. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” As I walked around the block, I willfully chose to thank God for what I did have. Jesus had died on the cross for me, He saved me, He had given me a great family and a lot of success, and my generous, hardworking employee was just trying to help when this happened. In the big picture, I had really been blessed.
A Choice of Halves
My friend was a perfect illustration of a classic question: Is the glass half empty or half full? Life is really a series of answers to that question, and the answers are more than an indication of optimism or pessimism. How we look at a situation determines whether our emotions will send us spiraling upward or downward. And every time, our response is a matter of choice.
How can we live the kind of life that looks at the half-full side of relationships, work, marriage, children, and faith? By understanding the power of perspective.
If I asked you what your most painful, pressing difficulty is right now, what would you say? Marriage? Money? Depression? Lack of significance? Get your answer clear in your mind, and then consider the lenses through which you see this problem. Here’s a helpful formula to use when you look at your half-full, half-empty glass: C + P = E. Circumstances plus Perspective equals Experience.
Contrary to popular belief, your experience is not defined by your circumstances. It’s defined by how you see your circumstances. Like my friend who went through two almost identical tragedies, your perspective can make a powerful difference in the direction of your life.
Rising Above Your Circumstances
You can live above your circumstances if you let your perspective interpret your circumstances rather than letting your circumstances determine your perspective. For the most part, you have no control over your circumstances - the economy, people’s attitudes, the traffic, etc. You can’t change them. But you have complete control over your perspective. If C + P = E, you can only change E by changing P.
Focusing on the half-empty will take you in some very painful directions. Focusing on the half-full will take you in some very powerful directions. If you want your experience to improve, don’t focus on your situation. Focus on how you see it.
This is not a psychological gimmick; it’s a spiritual reality. Paul demonstrated that in his letter to the Philippians. His first trip to Philippi was pretty rocky (see Acts 16). Several times since, he had been beaten with the same brutality Jesus had experienced before the crucifixion, and now he was sitting in a dirty prison.
What kind of letter would you write? Mine would look like this: “I don’t know how much more I can take. There are rats in here, my wounds are infected, and people are telling lies about me. Please do whatever you can to get me out of here.” But Paul wrote about joy, gratitude, and hope. How?
Paul had perspective. He knew one of the most important keys to a spiritually fulfilling life: focus on Christ.
In every situation, we have three choices with regard to focus. We can look downward or upward, we can look inward or outward, and we can look backward or forward.
My letter to Philippi might have been downward, looking at visible, earthly evidence without regard to God’s power and purpose. It might have been inward, focusing on my hardship rather than its benefit to others. And it might have been backward, obsessed more with what had already happened than what God could do in the future.
Paul’s letter to Philippi was different. He was focusing upward: “I thank my God every time I remember you” (1:3), and, “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21), for example. He was focusing outward: “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (1:12), and, “The important thing is that in every way . . . Christ is preached” (1:18). And he was focusing forward: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (1:6), and, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death” (1:20).
Paul’s answer t whether the glass was half empty or half full made him joyful, not depressed - fruitful, not empty. It honored God.
Your perspective can have that kind of power, too. My carpenter friend experienced both: depression and emptiness after fire one, and joy and blessing after fire two. His business today is going great, he has a powerful testimony, and people ask him why he’s so content. He tells them that God is in control - He can allow things not only to burn down, but also to be built back up.
My friend, like Paul, has experienced the radical difference a perspective can make. And if you will look upward, outward, and forward, you can experience the difference, too.
posted by TIUranta at 2:23 PM
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