What is a fluid perspective? A fluid perspective is the ability to adjust one's perspective to the demands of This Present Moment so as to maximize one's ability to experience well-being right here and right now.
If we have a rigid perspective that remains fixed regardless of what events and circumstances occur, our sense of well-being will end up depending upon whether the events and circumstances properly correspond to our rigid perspective.
For instance, if we only accept warm sunny days, we will have a difficult time enjoying our lives whenever it is cold and cloudy out. If we loathe being caught in traffic and long lines, we will become impatient and agitated every time we find ourselves stuck in one of them. If we are attached to the idea of our favorite team winning, we will be disappointed when they lose.
Conversely, if we have a fluid perspective, we will find a way to appreciate cloudy and cold days. We will find a way to turn being stuck in traffic and long lines into quality time. And we will be able to allow life be just fine even if our team loses.
It is perfectly fine to have preferences. It is perfectly acceptable to prefer warm sunny days to cloudy ones, quick, free-flowing traffic and lines to backed up traffic and lines, and our team winning to losing. But where we tend to go wrong is when we remain attached to these preferences even when our circumstances are clearly otherwise.
There are two basic types of circumstances: those we have control over, and those that we have no control over. For circumstances we have control over, we can take an action to change them. For circumstances over which we have no direct control, the only thing we can change is our perspective in relation to them. A fluid perspective enables us to adjust our perspective to accept circumstances that we would normally reject and resist with a rigid perspective.
Developing a fluid perspective takes practice. The way to practice is simply to find ways to appreciate circumstances that we would normally find undesirable. For example, the next time we find ourselves in a long line or stuck in traffic, instead of going through our usual routine of annoyance and impatience, we can simply practice patience. We can smile and think to ourselves how wonderful it is to be exactly right where we are here and now.
Obviously, we may not inherently feel this way. But we can act as if we do. When we make the effort to accept a normally undesirable circumstance, we find that we can in fact feel OK in these moments. With practice, we can develop the ability to feel just as good when we are stuck in traffic as we do when we are relaxing by a pool on a hot sunny day with a nice cool drink in hand.
The practice of adjusting our perspective in the face of undesirable circumstances is a form of "spiritual weightlifting," and can greatly enhance our Personal Power, which in turn can enhance the quality of our Moment of experience, and thus, our lives as a whole. This is because it is very seldom that our lives are an ongoing highlight reel of ideal circumstances. We all experience "down time," and plenty of it. It is very easy to feel good and be happy when our circumstances perfectly match our expectations and everything is going well. It is much more difficult to feel good when our circumstances fall short of our expectations and things do not go according to plan. If we can learn to adopt a fluid perspective and improve the quality of our "down time, this will improve the quality of our life experience as a whole. With practice, we can learn to feel good in This Present Moment while facing circumstances that in the past may have caused us considerable discomfort.
It should be mentioned that there may be times when we encounter extreme circumstances during which we cannot reasonably expect to fully adopt a fluid perspective to feel perfectly fine in those moments. Examples of these include when encountering a serious illness, or dealing with the sudden, untimely loss of a loved one. However, even while these extreme circumstances may not be reasonably overcome simply by adopting a fluid perspective, our ongoing practice at doing so in less-extreme conditions will at the very least enable us to adopt a perspective in these circumstances that is more fluid than it would have been otherwise, which will enable us to better cope with the pain even while not fully eliminating it.
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