One Easy Trick to Begin Seeing the World in a Different Way

4 min read

. . . know that you have the power to see the world in a different way, no matter how much it seems you’re confined to a box, restricted to only one choice, or forced into only one role. -Dr. Jason Holland, Lifespark

There are a number of ways to potentially enhance your mental flexibility, which refers to the ability to switch tasks and consider multiple perspectives.

As simple as that may sound, letting go of years of programming about what’s real and not real, possible and not possible requires much time and practice. In one passage of Castaneda’s book, Don Juan describes a method for starting such a practice:

In the case of looking at a tree or bush, what you know how to do is to focus immediately on the foliage. The shadows of the leaves or the spaces in between the leaves are never your concern. Start focusing on the shadows of the leaves on one single branch and then eventually work your way to the whole tree, and don’t let your eyes go back to the leaves, because the first deliberate step to storing personal power is to allow the body to not-do.

Because I’ve witnessed this scene so many times, my brain automatically cues up a picture of leaves on a tree that are clearly in front of the blue sky, which only pokes out in little glimmers between the leaves. The foliage naturally takes center stage, and these little glimmers fade into the background (See the video to the left for a full explanation of the tree exercise).

I have to stare and work at it for a while before something new appears, kind of like a 3D art poster from the 90’s. But a colleague of mine once gave me a tip. Try to imagine that the blue glimmers shining through the leaves are actually small patches of snow on top of the tree. Start with one small area and then shift your focus to the whole tree, paying particular attention to the bluish spaces in between.

I remember the first time I saw it. Suddenly, the glimmering sky was no longer sky. The spaces between the leaves protruded outward, like tiny bluish-white handkerchiefs arranged upon the foliage. And the prominence of the leaves diminished too, now just part of a larger whole.

You might rightfully ask, so what’s the point? The sky really is behind the tree. Why would I ever want to see it any other way?

In the same way an image of leaves (with the sky in the background) is automatically cued up when we look at a tree, long-standing fallacies and assumptions (e.g., I’m unlovable) can come to dominate our perceptions, almost like a computer virus that infects all incoming information.

The key to seeing beyond these rigid scripts is to pay attention to the “spaces in between” — the words and thoughts, people and places that fade into the background as some other life drama plays out in the foreground.

And once you get good at that, try to then look for the “spaces in between” that exist in other aspects of your life.

It could be words of encouragement or praise that gets brushed off as unimportant. Or it could be creative ideas that are drowned out by self-criticism and too quickly labeled as “stupid” or “impossible.”

Whatever the case, know that you have the power to see the world in a different way, no matter how much it seems you’re confined to a box, restricted to only one choice, or forced into only one role. The answers may not be as far away as you think, perhaps hiding somewhere in the spaces in between.

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