A CURE FOR SPD (SMALL PERSPECTIVE DISORDER)

Perspective from Canyonlands National Park.

WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE

Out on the road, traveling through southeast Utah, and northeast Arizona, you see few people, small towns, and long miles of range in many directions interrupted by buttes and canyon cliffs jetting up toward the sky.  The horizon goes for miles, and it can stretch the perspective.   

I’m on day 11 of a much-needed break from the “day job”.  My wife and I planned a trip to Phoenix to hang out with good friends, but along the way, we scheduled a two-day stop in Moab, UT to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.  All I can say about those two parks is… “WOW!”  We did some hiking, and I took notes on trails I want to hike when we revisit someday. 

Now, we’re on our way home and I’m riding shotgun as we pass through Winslow, AZ and back to our version of reality. I’ve had some good downtime reflecting. I’m probably pointing out the obvious here, but if we’re not mindful, intentional, and establishing and defending healthy boundaries, the day-to-day cares of the world and the expectations others attempt to place upon us can gradually impact the direction of our journey until at some point, we look around and wonder to ourselves, “how the hell did I get out here”… and I’m not talking about Utah or Arizona…

Just my perspective, but I don’t believe we fall into ruts. I believe we create them over time by traveling the same path over and over, whether it be literally or figuratively, until one day, the trail we walked is no longer a trail…it’s a rut that we’ve become so comfortable in we could navigate through it in the dark. It reminds me of a saying I used frequently as a coach… “you play how you practice.” Whatever fundamentals we reinforce daily will be the fundamentals we go to in the pressure of game (or life) situations. Turn the pressure up in a game, or in life, and we fall back on whatever patterns we’ve been practicing.

Something that has occurred to me during this time off work is that I somehow got lost and ended up on the Trail of Small Perspective, and by the way, the trail sucks; don’t take it! I’ve carried big dreams in the past, but my current perspective hasn’t been large enough to make room for those bigger dreams. So, what did I do? I left just sort of set those dreams down along the trail and walked off when I lost my way. I’ve adopted a popular and pathetic mindset:

• “I just need to get through today…”
• “I just need to get to Friday…”

Vacations can interrupt routines…and that can be both a good and a bad thing.  When we have positive momentum, vacations can be an event that gets us off track if we’re not intentional…but if we are already off-track, like in my case, some windshield therapy can be a good thing to help me step back and gain better perspective, get refocused, and get back on the trail.

WHAT IS GOING TO BE YOUR REALITY?

So…here I am traveling along Interstate 40 heading back to reality, and the question I must ask is this: “What version of reality do I want to embrace?”  This question applies to my marriage, my family, my career, my health…it applies to everything! 

I know what I’m heading back to, a job with a lot of stress.  The people I work with seem to be in a constant state of crisis.  Some have figured it out; most continue to repeat the patterns that have led to the circumstances they’re in.  You can point people in the right direction, you can connect them with resources…but you can’t make them choose to walk out of their circumstances…they must take those steps on their own. 

However, I’ve done this work for over 25 years and I’m not sure how to divorce myself from the choices my clients make. If you care, you care…so their choices impact me in a secondary manner. We may not have to live with the consequences of their choices…but we certainly don’t go home at night feeling any sense of victory when they’re losing. What I’m trying to say here is this: if you’re in the business of helping people, you will probably be impacted by both the wins and the losses of those in your care, to some degree.

Before we know it, if we’re not paying attention to what is going on around us, we’re no longer dictating the tempo as we live our life… we’re playing defensively, we’re back on our heels; we’re up against the ropes; we’re playing not to lose instead of playing to win; we’re reacting to what life throws at us instead of implementing our game plan.

All the losses that I’d been experiencing through my clients choices led me down a path to where my perspective had shrunk, and I wasn’t paying attention to how this was impacting me… I was focused on getting to Friday. I got on the hamster wheel and focused all my energy on the day-to-day routines without making any deposits into my own dreams. I spent my paycheck and had nothing left to invest in my future. It depleted my energy, I lost focus and with it, I lost passion. I adopted the mantra of just trying to get through the day and the week… but nothing changed – and that’s on me. I emphasize this because there are many things we may not be able to control…but what we can control is how we respond, and we absolutely must control how we respond.

WANT TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE?  LOOK BEHIND YOU…

If we want to have some idea of what our future could look like, we can gain some great insight simply by looking back at where we’ve come from.  Our lives are filled with patterns…some good; some not so much.   When it comes to the negative patterns, if we’ve done nothing to address them, it is likely we will repeat those patterns in the future.  Why would we possibly think otherwise?  If they are patterns, it means there is some evidence they’ve repeated themselves in some way or another in our lives, right?  Well…if we’ve done nothing to address those patterns, it stands to reason they are likely to rear their ugly heads in some way or another in the future. 

“Practice with poor fundamentals; you’ll play with poor fundamentals…”

In keeping with the subject of this post, if I’ve had poor boundaries and allowed my dreams to be shelved due to the pressures and stressors of my day-to-day life, and it took a 12-day road trip to become aware of the obvious… an “obvious” that wasn’t so obvious when I was running along on my hamster wheel…

…then I better figure out a game plan as I head back into my reality, so this pattern doesn’t repeat itself… again!   Besides, I only get so many vacation days in a year, and at 60+ years old, I really don’t have a year to waste so I can figure out next year what I figured out this year. 

I WANT TO MAKE THIS ABOUT YOU (as well as about me)

I’m using my experience here to point out my stuff… but my point for writing isn’t just to air my problem areas. 

• What about you? 
• Are you stuck? 
• Did you find yourself relating to some of what I shared here? 
• Have you entered into a long-term relationship with your personal hamster wheel? 
• Has the day-to-day grind caused you to lose sight of what you want to be after? 
• Are you living paycheck-to-paycheck with no plan for how you invest in your future? 

GAINING PERSPECTIVE

For me, gaining perspective happens in the high country as I’m hiking the trails here in the Rocky Mountains, but it also happens as I drive on the open road.  I need to disconnect from my day-to-day routines, I need an interruption of some sort that causes me to see the gradual unwanted shifts that have taken place over time. 

But just seeing those shifts is not enough; I need a game plan, so I have an answer for those day-to-day pressures that come against me.  I can’t simply walk away from my job as a probation officer, at least not yet…but I can certainly develop a plan for how I’m going to address those dreams that need my attention on a daily and weekly basis if they’re going to become a reality…and that’s where I am right now. 

CLOSING

What I hope here is that this post is much more than a way for me to process my own journey.  I’m going to post it, but I realize that it has been written at different points on this 12-day break from my reality. I may look at it at some point and see that it has a lot of holes in the message – but my hope is that it connects with someone out there.

I hope that it causes you as a reader to stop and evaluate where you are and where you want to be at some point in your journey. I hope it causes some of you to stop and consider where you’ve allowed yourself to become stuck on the hamster wheel running someone else’s race (whether that be an employer or simply someone else’s idea of what success should look like for you), with nothing to show for the dreams so dear to you.

It’s time to end this post.  Tomorrow I head back to my day job, and I still need to evaluate my game plan for moving forward.  I can’t afford to waste more time on that damn hamster wheel!