Perspective

Life is about perspective and how you look at something... ultimately, you have to zoom out. Whitney Wolfe Herd

This month NASA revealed the first images from the James Webb telescope. Conceived in the 1980’s by forward thinking scientists seeking to explore the infrared spectrum it was launched in December 2021 into a solar orbit. 

This project required insatiable curiosity, imagination, forward thinking, meticulous planning, perseverance and determination. They said at launch 344 things could go wrong. None did.  All the deep space images will be accessible to scientists around the world to share the knowledge, beauty and mystery of our universe dating back billions of years before earth even existed.  Putting earth into this perspective is humbling at best.

Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life. Joni Eareckson Tada

In NLP time line therapy we zoom out to perceive our situation in third person. If you feel overwhelmed close your eyes and imagine viewing your situation as if watching a movie, then keep zooming out until you are looking at planet earth from afar, keep zooming u

Memories

Memory is defined as the faculty of acquiring, storing, retaining and retrieving information and can be sensory, short or long term. 

Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. Stanislas de Boufflers Sensory memory is transitory lasting seconds however it can trigger the memory of a moment.

Happiness is health and a short memory! Audrey Hepburn Freud referred to short term memory as the conscious mind paying attention to the here and now.

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal. Cicero. Long term memories lie outside of our awareness in the realm of the pre and unconscious, recalled when needed.

As we age selective memory loss may lead to dementia.  There is no coincidence that an accurate test for dementia is simply drawing a clock face. We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams. Jeremy Irons

The longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it. Stevie wonder

Let’s use music as our Tardis to remember  The Way We Were by Barbara Streisand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifWOSnoCS0M

Time keeps on slipping

The Steve Miller band penned Time keeps on slippin slippin into the future.
Yesterday I woke up and wondered how September had arrived in the blink of an eye.
Time is free, but it's priceless.
You can't own it, but you can use it.
You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
Once you've lost it, you can never get it back. Anon

Jim Croce tried to capture time in a bottle.
He articulated the dread we feel as we wait in anticipation for things we desire; yet once it comes, time passes all too quickly. We are told that the past is gone, the future is unknown so live in the present. This is ever more true given the challenges of COVID affecting every aspect of our lives.  

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa1 Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone. George Carlin

We can’t control time but we can control how we choose to spend it. Choose wisely.

One two cha cha cha

It is necessary sometimes to take one step backward to take two steps forward. - Vladimir Lenin

Optimists say it is not a disaster, it is the cha cha. - Anon  This week four planets: Mercury, Mars, Uranus and Neptune are retrograde meaning they appear to be moving backwards in the night sky.  According to the Cambridge dictionary retrograde means returning to older methods and ideas while in astrological terms retrograde planets make us more aware.

Time marches forward and we believe that there are far better things ahead than what we leave behind - CS Lewis. Even though we take one step back we are still moving forward.  It is up to us to choose to go back to safety or go forward towards growth. - Abraham Maslow

This week I invite you look back to see how far you have come and then turn to face the future. The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is called the dance of life and when you dance to your own rhythm, life taps its toes to your beat.