What if you looked at your life sideways? Just saw it differently for a moment. How about your relationships? How about your career?

Not abandoning what you have but getting a new perspective so you can appreciate what is there. We all live in great abundance of things and opportunities that we neglect in our haste to the next. We often misinterpret busyness for pursuit of what we want–progress towards happiness or fulfillment. When we pause and reflect, we can realize the error of our ways. It is hard to do this by yourself. 

Here is a poem I wrote for the "waterskeeters" who recklessly glide across the surface but never see themselves. 

Wholely Water

When we slow down and take stock of where we are going and why–it can be transformative. We have to be open to truthful feedback and a sideways perspective (a new point of view), we can learn something. Great mentoring happens when you suspend your defensiveness, your desire to say the "right" thing, and your ever present judgmentalism. Your eyes and mind, dare I say, your heart can be opened to new truths.

Anyone who knows me, knows my mother has the uncanny ability to give me sideways views of myself. Over and over she has helped me see myself as opposed to the facades I was constructing.

But then it happened to mom! She got a sideways lesson. Her perspective was altered.  My mom has been painting for decades and she continues to evolve. A few years ago she lost the cartilage in her right arm and paints on the floor so she doesn't have to lift her arm. This changes the shape and size of her canvases. She also decided to do more "abstract" work. So she started taking classes in her late 80s and got a mentor! Never too late to change and adapt. 

So my mom painted this mythical waterfall near rocks and a tree to the left.

Her teacher/mentor came to the house and wanted to see her newest things. My mom has been experimenting with more vertical forms. Anyway, my mother pulled out three paintings and leaned them against a wall, including this one. Her teacher quickly turned two of the paintings on the side, converting my mom's vertical paintings into horizontals. (see below) My mother was astonished. "That IS the way it was supposed to be!, my mother exclaimed. And that is now the way it will be hung and sold. Of course the owner of the painting can do whatever they want, but what was the original intent of the artist?

It is obvious to you, right? Everyone who sees this says that. Now before you doubt my story or my mother's intelligence (How dare you :)). Listen to me. My mother has painted more than 1400 originals. When she paints them she turns them around and views them from all sides. She has an eye like no one else. But like all of us she got stuck in her perspective, she needed help and was open to it.

We all try to will the Ouija board of life. We intend things, we plan things, we set firm expectations. And when things end up differently we are disappointed and worse, we can defend the status quo. The way it is supposed to be, the tradition, the habit, and the comfortable way. No!

We have to be open to a sideways view of ourselves. We need help to see ourselves. We have to invest in seeing ourselves accurately. 

The definition of insanity is –doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!

We need help to change and adapt. Mentors, teachers, coaches, therapists, all are capable of showing us things they see that we can't. Caring for others can help us see ourselves and the world around us. Our biases, our distractions, and our egos limit what we see.

Stop for a moment to see your reflection and explore what is below the tension of the surface. Mentor the waterskeeters in our lives to see what they are missing. Look at your world sideways and you might see new horizontals in your verticals.

Thanks for reading. John