Have you ever noticed how completely consumed you can become by one thing?

A concern, something someone said, or an idea you just can't let go of. Every time your mind returns to it, you follow the same familiar train of thought, arriving at much the same conclusion.

You might not think about it all day, but whenever you do, you seem to see it in exactly the same way.

I've been wondering whether, when this happens, we're actually seeing the whole picture. Or whether we've become so focused on one part of it that we've stopped noticing everything else.

Sometimes it takes something completely ordinary to make us realise how fixed our perspective has become.

I’m going to see Mum this week, and I remember a time not that long ago when I used to think of it as a chore - I have to go to Mum’s. I’m embarrassed to admit that, but there it is. It’s a 2 ½ hour drive if I’m lucky and sometimes it takes 5 hours to get there when the traffic is bad.

One day I had an epiphany, a reframe that completely changed the way I see it – I get to go and see my Mum. In fact, I’m lucky. My Mum is still alive and she’s not that far away and I can just get in my car and go and see her whenever I like.

Well, that changed everything. Suddenly a chore that meant I didn’t know if I was going to be on the road for 5 hours or 10 hours became a privilege. I’d even travel further to see Mum if I had to.

That realisation stayed with me, and I started noticing other things I'd been thinking of as chores. Not all of them suddenly became privileges. Some were simply the consequences of choices I'd willingly made.

The dishes, for example. I could focus on the seemingly endless washing up, or I could remember that we'd chosen to sit around the table and eat together as a family every night.

Both things were true.

The dishes still needed washing, but they were also evidence of something I valued

I also thought of my animals. Instead of seeing feeding all the animals I have as a chore, I see it as a choice I have made to bring each animal here to share my life. And I love every one of them.

The work hasn't disappeared. I've simply remembered why I am doing it.

I wonder how many times we get bogged down in the mundanity of life that we lose our perspective. It can also happen when we get so deeply focused on what we are doing that we can’t see anything outside of our main focus.

All of this has made me curious about how much of what we experience depends on where we place our attention. And I've been exploring that idea in a surprisingly literal way.

It’s like when I was driving the other day, on an unfamiliar road and focussing intently on a car I was certain was going to do something unpredictable when suddenly my passenger points out a new dam that has been dug out on the side of the road.

I hadn't noticed it at all.

Of course, concentrating on the road was exactly what I needed to be doing. But it struck me how much can exist within our field of vision without ever entering our awareness.

Lately, I’ve been practising seeing, quite literally: using my peripheral vision. Whenever I remember, I relax my vision from the ‘thing’ I’m focused on and expand my gaze. In the deliberate act of seeing in my peripheral, my eyes don’t move. Instead, my awareness widens to take notice of what is happening at the edges.

My cows are wonderful teachers in this regard.

They're curious creatures, and when I'm working with them, I might have two standing in front of me and another quietly approaching from behind.

By adjusting my position and widening my awareness, I can keep an eye on the two in front of me while also noticing the third cow taking tentative steps towards me.

I'm not trying to look directly at all three at once. I'm practising being aware of more than one thing at a time.

It’s surprisingly difficult for me to maintain peripheral awareness all the time. We are so accustomed to focusing our vision, our attention, directly at whatever seems most important.

For me what seems to be happening as I relax my gaze is that it almost looks like a light has turned on in the periphery of my vision. Things that were there all along, but that I'd barely been aware of while concentrating on something else, suddenly become more noticeable. Sometimes everything at the edges of my vision are exactly as I expected but interestingly other times, I’m tempted to turn my head and focus directly on what is there.

With practice it is becoming easier to maintain awareness of several things without losing focus on the central object of my attention and I must admit I have seen a few strange things in my peripheral vision that I haven’t got an answer for yet.

I am curious though, if I can train myself to notice what is happening at the edges of my vision, then perhaps I can also become better at noticing what’s at the edges of my thoughts or what’s at the edges of my assumptions or even the stories I tell myself about what is happening. Perhaps perspective isn’t about getting a different viewpoint but just seeing more fully what is already there.

Looking back, I wonder whether that's exactly what happened when I changed the way I thought about visiting Mum. I'd been so focused on the journey that I'd stopped noticing what sat beyond it.

The distance hadn't changed. The traffic hadn't changed. But once I widened my perspective, I could see something that had been there all along.

I still had my Mum to visit.

If perspective is about seeing more of the picture, perhaps it helps to remember that today is just one day in an entire year. That whatever is occupying our thoughts right now is only one part of a much bigger story. This is not to diminish our problems but rather to expand our field of vision which can contains them and show us more of the picture.

Perhaps there's a time for looking closely and a time for looking more widely. Sometimes we need to examine the details, ask difficult questions and give something our full attention.

But perhaps we also need to recognise when we've been looking at the same thing for so long that we've forgotten there's anything else to see.

That's what I'm discovering through this little experiment with my peripheral vision. I don't always need to look directly at something to be aware of it. Sometimes I need to relax my focus and allow more of the picture to come into view.

And I'm beginning to wonder whether the same might be true of life.

Perhaps gaining perspective isn't always about finding a different way to look at something. Sometimes it's about remembering to notice everything else that's already there.

And when our perspective gets broader the thing we have been looking at gets reframed.

• What might you discover if you stopped looking so intently at what's in front of you and started noticing what else is there?

• What has helped you widen your view in the past?

• What might be sitting at the edges of your attention that you haven't been noticing?

May this day bring you peace. May you feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

Until next time,

Leeanne

P.S. I’d love to hear from you. When you need a little perspective, what helps you find it? Simply hit reply and tell me.

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