Gaining Perspective & Clarity – Seeing the Wood From the Trees!
It can sometimes be hard to get a sense of perspective and clarity on our own problems can’t it? We can be so involved in something in our mind that we can’t mentally distance ourselves enough from it to view it in a clearer way. All our thoughts, feelings, emotions and concerns create a mash up of being stuck in our minds, and sometimes in our life too.
Or as the old saying goes, sometimes we ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ (the meaning of which, according to the Cambridge dictionary is ‘to be unable to understand a situation clearly because you are too involved in it’).
And I think we’ve all been there. It’s like those moments where we realise what great advice we can give to others about how they should handle a situation yet, despite knowing that advice, we seem unable to apply it to ourselves. We just can’t get that distance and perspective on it.
Last week was a pretty rough one for me, simply because the man flu well and truly knocked me for six (and as we all know, man flu really is the worst!!). I think it was the longest period of sickness I’ve experienced for more than a decade. My high hopes of a swift recovery soon evaporated into a lost week of feeling rubbish and not getting much done in any area of my life. I had to rearrange clients (all of whom were great – thank you!), cancel meetings and pretty much draw a line through anything I had planned.
And perhaps the hardest thing for me was missing out on any exercise; just going from one room to another left me drained! Missing a couple of sessions here and there with a niggle or family commitments is frustrating; missing a whole week is a disaster. Isn’t it? When I miss training I instantly feel like I’ve put on half a stone and I hate that feeling. I won’t lie, there were times last week when I felt very, very sorry for myself! There were moments when I totally lost perspective. Instead of a week of illness it felt at times like the wheels of life were well and truly coming right off!
Of course that’s not logical or reasonable. And it certainly isn’t helpful!
So what I needed, and I think we all need sometimes, is a way to gain a bit of perspective and clarity on our current situation.