During a consultation with an optometrist you
will put your face against a machine called an auto-refractor.
The doctor will flip
various lens in front of each eye asking constantly, "Does
this make it clearer or worse?"
The application of the metaphor comes easily. We'll just use a Life Chart instead
of an eye chart. Does your job make your ability to see what is really important,
clearer or worse? Flip. Did your parents make your vision of the world
clearer or worse? Flip. How about the lens of education? Flip.
What contribution has your marriage made to your vision? Flip. How about
the promotion you got last year? Flip. Your own heart attack? Flip.
What did going through the re-engineering project do to you? Flip.
Change is simply combination of such lenses. These change lenses are positive
factors in our lives only if we can see THROUGH them to something beyond the
lens itself. If the lenses are smudged and dirty we start to focus on them
rather than on what they were meant to reveal to us. We start to look AT the
lens rather than THROUGH it and end up in a lot of stress.
Many lenses are available to you. Accounting lenses and medical lenses. Lenses
for artists and homemakers. A being laid off lens and a being hired lens. Another
if you're a man and another if you are a woman. There is one for poverty and
one for wealth. Not one of these lenses is an end in itself. Each is simply
a viewpoint THROUGH which to get a glimpse of the landscape beyond. Change
always reveals something beyond itself.
Some of the lenses of our lives make things clearer in the spiritual sense,
while others fog and cloud both our out-sight and in-sight. We need to learn
how to positively impact the ratio of the two. It's a spiritual version of
what the Endeavor astronauts had to do for the ailing Hubbell space telescope.
In addition to installing gyroscopes to keep things in balance, they replaced
the Wide Field Planetary Camera so the telescope could see and record things
more clearly. That's what we need -- a Wide Field Planetary Camera for our
personal and corporate souls. Come to think of it, we may need a gyroscope
too. Change is the opportunity of a lifetime, learn to see THROUGH it.
The following quotation must be printed
at the conclusion of each reprinted article:
"Copyright The Ian Percy Corporation."
Ian Percy is one of North America's most inspirational speakers.
Ian Percy is an international speaker and
consultant and can be reached at www.ianpercy.com
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