Perspective

It's all about perspective. I had two situations recently which have really symbolised our choice in this.

How did I go from being initially worked up about them, to suddenly feeling totally full of love for them?

Magpies outside our window, with a nest, chattering all day and waking at 5am.

A little boy at soft play who was a bit rough with Coraline

What changed? I heard more of the story.

Our neighbours told us the magpies have been here for decades. They have their young every other year and they are protective of them, hence noisy, for a short period of time as their young are growing. That's why we'd never heard them before, as we moved in in August three years ago, which would have been after this early summer nesting period. In my head I'd imagined that the birds were new, had just arrived, and would be noisy ever afterwards. Hearing this made me realise it's their home, and they have been quiet for the three years we've been here, so I know it's temporary. I simply felt a rush of excitement and love to have them in the garden, once I understood all this. It's their home! I actually love hearing them about now, and see it as a lovely noise.

At soft play, the little boy's mum came over to me and said, "I hope he's not too rough, we have recently adopted him, and he is just settling into things". My whole feelings, as with the magpies, became a rush of love.

I said all this to Kevin, and said, "so because I heard more of the story, I feel totally different". "You don't even need the story," said Kevin, "you can just choose to feel differently". Kev hadn’t been bothered about the magpies, he’d embraced them.

My old lifecoach used to say, "everything's perfect; it's only your thinking that's changing it. It's all your perception. It's your choice if you let something affect your peace of mind. You've always got a choice. You could decide to just let go and you will have a shift in perception. It's just a shift in thinking. A situation is just a situation, and it's you that makes it enjoyable or not. You tell yourself the story and you can choose to tell yourself a better story at anytime. You can tell yourself a less scary story, that's it'll all going to be alright. The way we feel comes from a minute change in thinking."