If you find yourself barely able to come up for air during a busy week, some perspective can help you get a better handle on your to-do list. By putting a particular detail in its broader context, you can shed unnecessary worries and see opportunities you might otherwise miss. Here are some strategies to help you step back and level up.
Take time to reconnect with your mission
- Consider how your specific tasks figure into the mission of your organization
- Take a wider view to see relationships and opportunities to work with others you would otherwise miss, leading to increased connectivity and impact
Notice “all or nothing” thinking
- If you catch yourself using red-flag words like “always” or “never” it’s time to expand your focus
- The best way to deal with this is to push the boundaries of your comfort zone and get messy by being willing to fail
Put yourself in someone else’s shoes
- Empathy is a great tool for approaching situations from a new angle
- Our tendency to ignore information that disproves our current-held notions about people and situations can create a feedback loop
- Either imagining or actually listening to someone else’s perspective can help you break out of this
Follow your awe
The experience of awe—defined as “the emotion that arises when one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one’s mental schemas”—can change your perception of time so that you feel like you have more of it during the day, which has an impact on decision-making.
Zoom out, but don’t zone out
- Pay attention to which details are important to achieving your goals, and take time to make sure you have sufficient information to make a decision
- The point of gaining perspective is not to avoid decision-making, but to put your specific idea, problem, or situation in a larger context which could contribute to new approaches and solutions you haven’t considered
Utilize the power of “Yes, and…” thinking
- Using the improv skill of saying “yes, and…”, you can accept the concrete reality about a given project or situation and build on it by seeing what can be added, changed, or improved.
- You can dismantle limiting beliefs that have become habits of mind while cultivating flexibility that will help you think creatively about future challenges
