What an Upside Down Pyramid Taught Me About Perspective

I live across from an upside down pyramid.

On a recent nighttime stroll, I stood with my back to the building and looked up at wall sloping out over my head.

To my surprise, I slowly started leaning forward from my ankles to the point where I had to catch my balance. It was completely subconscious. Experimentally, I righted myself and looked up again. The same experience occurred, as if an invisible hand was pulling me forward while my feet remained planted. I realized the unusual slope of the wall above me was tricking my perspective, forcing my brain to compensate by leaning my body to match the angle.

It got me thinking about the power of perspective. A false perspective can fool our minds, manipulating us in ways far more subtle than I experienced with the pyramid. It can lead us to adopt beliefs that aren’t true because they’re based on poor data. This highlights the importance of being committed to facts and truth. Inaccurate perspectives – about ourselves, others, and the world – can have a dramatically negative impact on our quality of life and on the lives of those around us. They can make us angry, jealous, arrogant, entitled, depressed, the list goes on.

So how do we find and maintain an accurate perspective? Here are some suggestions:

1. Be aware of your tendency to have a false perspective. It’s not just you. It happens to all of us.

2. Seek out and consider a variety of perspectives from reputable sources. Read, watch, and listen to people who see the world differently than you.

3. Accept truth even if it means changing your perspective. Burying your head in the sand when you discover facts you don’t like just makes your head dirty.

4. Practice a daily refocusing habit – meditation, podcasts, prayer, reading, etc. Something that realigns your perspective and gets you back on course from your inevitable drift. I have a morning routine of meditation, prayer, and spiritual reading that I find hugely helpful.

Where to Begin

If you’re wondering where to begin, start by examining your current worldview, the foundational way you perceive life, others, and yourself. What lens do you look through to see the world? What ground do you stand on? We all ground ourselves somewhere and believe in something, whether we acknowledge it or not. It could be in yourself, another person, your career, financial stability, pursing pleasure, helping others, etc. Personally, I find my deepest grounding in my relationship with God. Not in the trappings of any one religion per se, but in God Herself. What grounds us is foundational to our sense of identity and informs our biases, both of which significantly impact our perspective (for more info, see my posts on Identity and Biases). 

Examining your perspective choices can bring further clarity. Do you see the glass as half-full or half-empty? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you see yourself as a victim or as being responsible for your own experience? I’m not lobbying for only the “right” answer here – optimism needs to be balanced with realism and personal responsibility balanced with acknowledging your trauma. The trick is not to get trapped on the dark side of the equation and let it control your perspective.

So how about you? How do you perceive yourself? Others? The world? Where might “slanted walls” be throwing off your perspective? Keep your radar up. Consider different points of view. Be willing to change your perspective. Adopt a regular refocusing habit. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.