08 Jun Focus
I took the above picture from my tiny balcony in Bergen a couple of nights ago (11 p.m.).
Look at the picture and magine that you are watching your entire life.
What do you see?
What do you focus on?
This inspiration came to me as soon as I took the picture. I asked myself the same questions when I saw it.
When I sat with one of my clients yesterday afternoon the image spontaneously came to me again.
I asked the depressed, negative man without a job and money that has lost his appetite for food and almost all hope for the future; and who cannot find any meaning in his surroundings and has no desire nor motivation to do anything — to look at this picture.
His immediate response was that it was too dark and had no sunshine. Great! I said.
‘And what do you focus on?’
He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t like it. It should be different.’
I iterated that the bad new is that his life is not the way he wants it to be right now and the good news is that the feelings and thoughts we experience change as fast as the scenery in the sky. One moment they are there and the next moment they are gone. The shape, the colour or anything else never remains the same.
I paused for a few seconds and then asked, ‘What can you do to lift your gaze from the black whole and see the glimt of light shining in the sky?’
He sat up in the chair, smiled and told me that he likes taking pictures; and that he had bought a camera awhile back when he had been working. He himself came with the idea that perhaps he could go for walks and take some ‘silly’ pictures.
Doing something different and seeing something from a different perspective changes the way we think and feel. When we focus on the light, light is everywhere. When we focus on the dark, darkness is everywhere. With the awareness of what we see and what we focus on, it can help us change our mood and way of being; without letting ourselves become entangled in the ego mind that helped this man almost succeeding in taking his own life.
Never underestimate the small glimpses and little simple things in life. In the end, a smile and loving kindness towards self and others matters the most.
With grace and gratitude for the light we can bring to people in different ways.
~ Borghild
No Comments