Having the Right Perspective Will Create Success and Happiness in Your Life
By Bob Lucchesi

Bob Lucchesi here on Day 5 of this week’s The Writer’s Life to show you how to use limitations and constraints to propel you toward achieving your goals.

We started the week by harnessing the power of your limitations to give you focus. You developed a game plan … a canvas on which to use your choices and actions as paints and brushes to create a beautiful picture of your success.

And, you examined how successful people just get started in pursuing their dreams, no matter what their current conditions, limitations or constraints are. They don’t wait until they’re ready – they act now!

Yesterday, you learned how to create specific constraints to boost performance and get more done, even with a full plate.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

This quote, of course, is from John Milton’s book, Paradise Lost … and it’s a perfect way to start our discussion today on having the right perspective about the limitations and constraints in your life.

You can look at your present situation in the pursuit of your goals and see it as a hell or a heaven … it really is just a matter of perspective.

Harvard positive psychology expert and best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness, Shawn Achor, says having the right perspective will do more than just improve your happiness; it will propel you to achieve your goals.

By doing what Shawn calls Reality Architecture, you can recognize multiple realities simply by choosing to change your focus. This broadens your perspective and gives an advantage to achieve your goals from wherever you are. Shawn suggests you create an “alternate reality” to give you the best opportunity to succeed.

Do you think, given what you’ve learned this week, you could view your situation from a different perspective and create a more positive reality?

I bet you can!

But let’s give Shawn’s hypothesis a reality check, to see if anyone can actually create an “alternate reality” to succeed. Hmmm …

How ‘bout J.K. Rowling … Do you think she just allowed her limitations to keep her down, or did she choose a new reality that helped her set up a writing regimen that gave her dogged determination to complete her manuscript and make for a better life?

Let’s see, who else?

How ‘bout a 16-year-old boy with dyslexia, who drops out of high school, and the only thing he has going for him is his entrepreneurial spirit and a love of music. How do you think he perceived his reality? How would you perceive it?

Well, over the next decade and a half, the boy built a record label and added such bands as the Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, and Culture Club. Then his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and over the next 50 years he had over 400 companies under his direction, everything from cell phones to airlines.

You may have heard of him … it’s none other than billionaire, Sir Richard Branson.

Oh, by the way, Richard doesn’t use computers; he prefers an old-fashioned notebook and pen – which some would call a limitation. But not you and me!

One of my favorite films is screenwriter, Tom Schulman’s, Dead Poets Society. I love the scene where Robin Williams makes the students get up on their desks and tells them, “We must constantly look at things in a different way.”

I’ve met Tom, and I’ve told him how much I appreciated the message of Dead Poets Society … that we need to remind ourselves to stop and look at life from a different perspective.

So, stand up on a desk, look at your current situation, and see how you can create an “alternate reality” that serves you better than the one you’re in right now. What actions will you have to take to make that “alternate reality” a reality for you now!

I hope I’ve given you some perspective on how you can use your limitations and constraints to empower yourself … to create a plan to achieve your writing goals …

And, to encourage you to look at things in your life with a fresh, new perspective … so that you not only obtain the success you desire, but also enjoy the journey along the way.

I’d love to hear your comments about this series and what your new perspective is going to be on your way to achieving your goals.