Everything is an Attitude of Mind: 3 Ways to Flip Your Perspective
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”
The world needs people like you.
—Fearless people who will walk the path of enchantment.
—who speak in songs.
—who live in wonder with eyes fixed on heaven.
It’s true. So, stop listening to the spirit of the age. You know it as the voice that likes to say how very mundane life is and how chic it is to mention how mundane life is and how so very trendy it is to grasp at moments as if they somehow seem to elude you every moment of your life.
How quickly we forget how wonder-full life is.
A tall and rather rotund man once wrote a small book that was really an excuse for him to write a diary for the public—it was the only way, he said, that he could keep a journal; do it publicly. The author was G.K. Chesterton.
Originally the book took the form of entries written for a public newspaper. He wrote for a newspaper at a time when newspapers were relevant, even in his hometown of London, which was flush with hundreds of papers.
The book is titled Tremendous Trifles. And it explores the wonder of the every day. Things we might call “trifling.” Like things found in a trouser’s pocket. It is said Chesterton could defend capitalism, democracy, and God with the trifling things found in one’s pant’s pocket.
In the first chapter of this short book, he writes:
Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
The “want of wonder” relates to you and me. If we stop looking hard at the world, we will stop seeing it for all its intrinsic glory.
{It was the English poet Gerard Manly Hopkins who said when you look hard at the world, it looks hard back at you.}
But how can we live as seeing people in an age of distraction? How can we foster an attitude of mind that chooses to see the good and beautiful when all the world wants to sell us is fear, anxiety, and pain?
3 Ways to Flip Your Perspective
Number One - Talk to Yourself, Don’t Listen to Yourself
The Welsh minister Martin Lloyd-Jones made this idea famous. He writes:
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.
Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”
It’s easy to fall into the pit, trapped with a bossy self who likes nothing more than to remind you how downcast you should be, how hard life is, and how utterly hopeless the situation is.
But in Psalm 42, the psalmist flips the narrative. He says, “Sit down self, and let me know tell you something.”
Look at the contrast of selves talking:
His Self talking to him =Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
His Rebuttal = I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God.
Further down, more contrasting voices!
His Self talking to him = I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
His Rebuttal - But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night, I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
Take back the narrative! Talk to yourself about your hope and your joy, and give thanks.
Number Two - Take a Walk in the Woods
I know. Seems almost silly, right? Can it really be that simple?
It can. And it’s time to take back our God-given gift of the created order and to reestablish our relationship with it.
Researchers from the Finnish Forestry Research Institute discovered that a 20-minute in the woods boosts mental and physical health and helps youths build immunity to allergies. Spend a day in the woods, and you’ll find that it lowers your blood pressure and improves your overall vitality.
My first response to this research was, “Are you telling me that a federal government pays a research institute to study whether or not being outside in the woods is good for us? Isn’t this obvious?”
But the reality? No, it’s not obvious because, over the last 15 years, our culture across the globe has become more connected to devices as it becomes more detached from the created order. We now need to be told to get outside and walk in the woods. Researchers are realizing the need to show the benefits of being outside regarding remaining isolated indoors in front of a screen.
Before I get to Number Three, I’m going to take a twenty-minute break and go walk in the woods behind my house. Be right back.
<<Ok, I’m back.>>
Number Three - Ask a Friend How You Can Help Them
Remove the focus on your self and replace it with time pouring into a relationship. This perspective-flipper comes straight from Scripture.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippans 2:4)
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:16)
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)
Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. (Proverbs 19:17)
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
Participating in your immediate relationships is a spirit-filled way to keep your heart and mind off of your bossy self and on the needs of others. We’ve all experienced the phenomenon that happens when we pour into our loved ones. Magically our pain, hurt, and grief dims, replaced by the strength of the Holy Spirit.
Giving up the self heals even our deepest wounds.
A Parting Thought
Changing your perspective is more than simply changing your mind or narrowly focusing on a cerebral solution. You are a whole being, and wholeness comes from many areas of life.
You are:
Mind
Body
Spirit
And God created you to run on soul-ish things, as the wise theologian J.I. Packer once said. When we attend to all aspects of our lives, our attitudes change, and our physical countenance adjusts.
This is what revitalization looks like. This is what being a whole person is all about.
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
My new mini-course, The Summer Slowdown, explores three primary ways to revitalize our lives over the summer: Slow, See, and Participate. Today’s post is all about Participation in the created order and relationships. The Summer Slowdown provides three pre-recorded teaching sessions and a 98-page magazine/workbook that walks you through the Slow, See, Participate Method. To explore more and purchase, click the blue button below.
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
