At a recent conference one of the keynote speakers challenged all attendees to try a different angle. As a writer of fiction, the ability to take on a different angle is pretty well a necessity, but I’m not sure how well such ‘new perspectives’ always translate from fiction into reality.

Here we are in a brand new year. I’m sure many of us have made resolutions. Yet, have we tried looking through new eyes when setting our goals?

I don’t know about you, but if I’m entirely honest with myself, I can get a little comfortable with how things are. The way I approach daily tasks is familiar and I probably think it works quite well. Now, I suppose that’s fine if I’m happy with the outcomes, but I know that after time even the more tried and tested processes can become a little stale. How can we challenge this?

Take a different angle.

We look through our eyes and experience. But isn’t my way the best way? Hmmm …

Challenging our thinking and perspective always involves stretching (i.e. discomfort) and it can rasp our pride, if there’s any of that lurking in the shadows. It involves listening for understanding. How does it go – two ears, one mouth? Ouch, certainly not my strength… And perhaps the biggest point is value: of people and their life journeys.

Another way to gain a different perspective is a dramatic change in life circumstances. That sounds uncomfortable once again, but in reality it doesn’t even have to be a particularly large change to offer fresh vision. For example, the week before Christmas I was horribly ill with some virus that invited itself home. Short but sharp, yet for that morning of affliction I felt more miserable than I had in months. Once recovered, I was so SO grateful to be well. Had I of not been sick, thoughts for those enduring sickness may not have even crossed my mind during our Christmas celebrations.

What about the plight of the poor? (Perhaps read my poem ‘Civilised’ on this website, if you haven’t already.) Or an opinion you haven’t heard – hey, you can always agree to disagree, but if you don’t have the discussion you’ll never understand the struggle…

But how is this possible without time?

Maybe that’s one key to a different perspective. Time. Allow more time to listen; allow time for new experiences; value the times life stings as well as its joys, and then share this newness with others. It doesn’t sound so easy, but I’m thinking it’s a worthwhile goal for 2013.

I was recently glancing through some books in our office and found a travel journal I’d given my husband some years ago. On each page was a rectangle, embellished with an elegant boarder, in which were written the words ‘Highlight of the day’.

I thought for a moment. What was the highlight of my day?

During the festive season where love, joy and peace are featured, it would seem such a simple thing to identify a highlight in each day. Yet, often there are an awful lot of other, less pleasant sentiments that can bombard us during this time. We seem to so easily forget the point of Christmas – remembering the outpouring of grace and love with the birth of a Saviour. And instead of this translating into the physical exchange of gifts and sharing of love and joy with our fellow man, we can find ourselves exhausted, upset, guilty for overspending and/or overindulging and feeling nothing remotely comparable to loving or joyous.

What if we were to snapshot each day?

What would be at the centre of our thoughts, even in the midst of frantic doing? Would we remember ridiculous queues in shopping centres? The complaints of disgruntled gift recipients? Sugar-hyped, overtired children? An overinflated credit card debt?

How easy it could be to let our minds (and days) be driven by the more trying elements of life. Could this simple principle – highlighting a feature of each day – be a way of setting the tone of our world? Perhaps if we, on a daily basis, were looking for the uplifting moments of life, we could be less inclined to be sideswiped by an overwhelming negative. Granted, bad things happen, but so do good things. Everyday. What a great way to remind ourselves of those positives.

What will you write as your highlight for today?

Since my last blog our city has become draped in a haze of purple! Parks are blanketed with lavender. Streets are lined with this same hue. The jacarandas are in bloom.

Jacarandas are embedded in my earliest memories. As a small child I used to pick the blossoms off the ground, thinking that they looked just like a tiny bird with delicate purple wings. Later, I used to play under the shade of the jacarandas that graced our school grounds. Then, as a university undergrad, my friends and I would tease each other about how it was too late to study for final exams if the jacarandas were in bloom.

Now I look across my purple patchwork city and know that Christmas is near and the year is drawing to close. And guess what? Next year at the same time these flowers will come, just the same. The jacarandas are a measure of the season.

Life can be measured in this way. Years come and go, but just like the jacarandas, the seasons come again. Opportunity is a little like that.

Have you ever felt you’ve missed it – blown a chance beyond repair?

The scale of such ‘blowings’ can span the mundane to the extraordinary. Yet, just like the purple canopy that colours my city right now, opportunities will return.

Impossible? Granted, new opportunities may not look quite the same as the old; they may not have the same outcomes as previous offerings, but they will come. In light of this, opportunities should not be treated with contempt. Each holds its own potential. Yet, just as life moves forward, so must we.

There’s no point keeping jacaranda blossoms from a previous season. They grow brown and shrivelled; a fragile shell of what they once were. Just the same, if we miss an opportunity and stay in that moment, beating ourselves up about it time and again, we too will grow colourless and fragile. We may even be less inclined to grasp those future opportunities – or even recognise them when they come.

There’s no denying that missing some opportunities can bring deep pain, even an irreplaceable loss, but if you feel like you’ve stopped at such a place, let yourself feel the warm breeze of spring and the newness of life it represents. In time, the beautiful colours of the seasons will fill your world and the purple of the jacarandas will eventually hail the nearing of a New Year – a fresh start for new dreams and new opportunities.

Have you ever found yourself watching the sky – and not just for fun? I have, and often it’s to do with drying a mound of wet clothes flapping on a line. Oh so domestic, I know, but in the life of a busy household (without a dryer!) it is an important thing to get clothes washed AND dried.

Now, I live in a largely sunny part of the world where, excepting a period two years ago when it rained constantly for three months, you routinely get sunshine for at least half of the days in a week. Even so, time is precious and one likes to complete the tasks they have started, including the washing and drying of clothes.

For years I would go through the washing-pegging process and then subconsciously spend my day peering outside, flinching at every darkened cloud that hovered across the sky. On rare but overcast days at home, I even found myself hovering about the house, never venturing too far from the line, wondering if the sun would come out again.

You can imagine how difficult it was to focus because of my preoccupation with the appearance of every cloud bank on the horizon!

One day I (thankfully!) caught myself doing this and realised just how much energy I was wasting on something that may not even happen. And whether I worried or not, the sun would still shine or the rain would still fall and the clothes would get wet or dry. By focussing on these climate modulations, I was missing other opportunities! And you know what? I can count on my fingers the number of times I actually wasn’t able to get those clothes dry!

Have you ever made a list of the things you stress about?

You know, those things that worry or torment you, or even in a large or small way, control your life? I think that if we really challenged our concerns, we’d find that just like my potential rain clouds, we could probably count on our fingers the number of times they’ve come to pass.

I think that in many ways worry is habit. Perhaps a simple way to boycott our ‘might happens’, is to make a mental list each time we’re feeling anxious and categorise our concerns by considering: 1) Is it certain? and 2) Will worrying change it? (Even if it does happen!)

And once we’ve determined this, we can find something far more productive to do with our energy and time!

Recently I attended professional development in which we were asked what we could control in [a given] situation. Discussion highlighted that our behaviour is a direct, consistent ‘control point’ we have in a circumstance.

This principle seems clear when establishing something like healthy habits. We might opt for a piece of fruit instead of a chocolate when feeling snacky, or go for a brisk walk (even if it’s only for fifteen minutes) instead of staying on the couch. For a writer it might be giving up a favourite television programme in order to do more writing each day, or not playing that second game of spider solitaire. (But who would do that, anyway? Ummmm…)

The success of achieving a healthier life or writing more are quite obviously determined by prioritising and self-discipline. But have you ever found yourself saying:

“I just couldn’t help myself!”

I’ve said it and I’m sure some of you have, too. Perhaps it’s in reference to a sharp retort at the end of a stressful day; an unexpected calamity that drives us to the brink; a whining child. Yeowch, I can feel some sore points!

Ultimately, all of us in the training group conceded that we do have a choice to ‘help ourselves’. Challenging but true.

Even if we can control nothing else in life, we have the responsibility of controlling ourselves – and as reflected across our training group, this is the result of deliberate, habitual choices: choosing to stop and think before launching into a nagging tirade; realising what things ‘press out buttons’ and preparing in advance to give ourselves permission to hit pause! Of course we will blow it at times, but as we journey through life we should be learners, not just reactors.

On a slight tangent, this makes me think of life goals and dreams. It’s one thing to have goals, but it’s another thing to realise them. Sometimes life truly hands us some curve balls that we cannot seem to dodge. But just as a house doesn’t randomly build itself, so our achievement of a goal must be planned and thoughtfully constructed. Yes, there will be days when a figurative brick falls from nowhere onto our carefully nurtured dreams, smashing them to pieces. What to do?

Give up? Sometimes that seems easier. What if, instead of throwing hands in the air and frantically wailing, we focussed on the one thing we could do towards reviving that dream. One goal, one step, one choice – each day. A habit of learning and choosing.

That sounds like something I could do more of in my life. How about you?