Spinning in Circles? How to Get Fresh Perspective
“Can you take a quick look at this?” I asked my friend.
I had read it a million times, to the point where I nearly had it memorized. It seemed perfect. All grammar and spelling errors had been weeded out. All spacing and formatting seemed good. The idea of the story and the argument I was making were clear.
It was ready. It was done.
“Did you see this?” my friend pointed out gently.
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me!” I exclaimed, as I looked at where her finger was located on the text. “How could I have missed that? It’s so obvious.”
Too Close to See
Perhaps it was because I was too close to the work, too close to the project. In other cases, I may be too close to the situation, too close to the person . . . too close to whatever.
It makes me think of those French impressionism paintings in the pointillism style. There are a million tiny dots making up a beautiful image. When you are up close to the canvas, everything is a blur. There seems to be no rhyme or reason in the mess of dots. You simply can’t see the image.
It’s not until you step back, gain fresh perspective, and place some distance between yourself and the work of art that you can see the pattern that was always there. You have to take a giant leap 30,000 feet into the air.
Only then do you begin to see. Only then do you begin to gain a fresh perspective.
Stuck in the Middle
Isn’t it the same in our personal lives?
Sometimes we are too involved, too much in the middle, too close to the situation to see clearly. Sometimes we just can’t see through our own eyes. We need help. We need a new perspective. We need someone to come alongside us—to walk with us, to help us have a fresh view from the outside.
I can remember this happening a few years ago with my husband and me. We were smack in the middle of a major crisis—work, team, family, life.
We were doing the best we could to process on our own. I journaled a lot. I talked to myself a lot. I talked to my husband a lot. I even talked to the dog.
However, my self-processing, even processing with my husband who was also involved in the situation, didn’t cut it. It felt like we were spinning in circles, dancing around the same issues over and over. Sometimes, my self-talk and our conversations together sounded like a broken record. We couldn’t seem to break the cycle and make any movement forward.
We were stuck.
Is Anyone Out There?
“We have to find someone to talk to. We can’t figure this out on our own,” I told my husband.
We had seen enough tiny dots up close on the white canvas, we had heard our own voices long enough. It sounded like a broken record.
Desperate, we contacted multiple organizations around the globe to find someone to talk to—in person, remote. It didn’t matter. We just needed to talk to someone, to hear another voice, to listen to another drumbeat.
Many of the centers were booked solid for months out. I guess my husband and I weren’t the only ones looking for an outsider’s voice. There were other people “stuck” too.
See Beyond responded to our cries for help, and Tim Reid jumped on a plane. For three days, we talked. He listened. He counseled.
It was awakening to hear another voice besides my own and besides my husband’s. It woke us from our slumber.
Eye-Opening
It was as if Tim took us on an airplane ride. Together, we lifted above our chaotic circumstances, orbited our crisis, looked at it from different angles, discussed the “image” below, explored various solutions, and discovered new paths forward.
Hope and peace began to rise within us.
Having an outside presence and voice helped us do what we couldn’t do on our own.
That experience changed us. My husband and I saw the great value of having someone from the outside walk alongside us, someone else’s voice speaking into our lives. Now, it’s not something we only do in the middle of crises, but it’s something we do regularly in our daily lives.
For us, it might be having a regular, ongoing connection with someone who can bring an outsider’s perspective—an accountability partner, a mentor, or a coach. It can also involve someone who walks with us through critical moments of hardship, crises, challenges, or major life decisions—through debriefing and counseling.
Step Back
We were experiencing the power of having someone else come alongside us, take us by the hands, and say, “Step back for a moment. Let’s take a look at this canvas from a distance. You may begin to see the outline of the image, the beauty in the liminal space.”
It’s like my friend who looked at my writing.
“Did you see this?” my friend pointed out gently.
There it was, in black ink on the white paper. Now, it stood out like a sore thumb. It jumped off the page at me. It was evident, obvious, and real. Yet, for all those days, weeks, and months . . . through all those readings, both silently and out loud . . . I had missed it completely.
It was small, yet it was big. It seemed tiny, but it was huge.
Two quotation marks were stuck oddly right in the middle of my sentence. They weren’t supposed to be there. I had missed them time and time again, because I had my nose stuck to the canvas. I was too close to the work, too involved in the situation, too narrow-minded to see.
I needed someone looking at it with fresh eyes and a new perspective to notice, to point it out, to help me gain awareness. I needed a fresh view from the outside in order to see it, to know what was going on, and to correct it.
With someone walking alongside me, my writing was now perfect and ready to go.
