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This morning, I found myself sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise and thinking about perspective. Over the last few years, I’ve come to realize just how powerful a perspective shift can be. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes changing your circumstances really does change everything. But other times, the thing that transforms your experience isn’t a new circumstance at all. It’s seeing the same circumstance through different eyes.

Here’s an example, a few days ago, Josh and I had friends visiting from New York. As we sat around talking, they shared how moving to Maryland had completely changed their outlook on life. Where many people look at Maryland and see expensive housing, high taxes, and rising costs, they looked around and thought, “Wow, everything is so affordable here.”

It made me laugh because I’ve heard the opposite perspective my entire life. Most of our friends and family from the South or Midwest think Maryland is incredibly expensive. Yet our friends from New York saw the exact same place and felt hopeful.

Nothing about Maryland had changed.

Only the perspective had.

 

Sometimes the Breakthrough Is a Perspective Shift

The Same Circumstance, Different Eyes

That conversation reminded me of something Josh and I discovered when we started looking at property in other states.

For years, I’d heard that we could move elsewhere and get more land, a bigger house, or a lower cost of living. But when we actually started researching it, we realized something surprising.

Many of the places we thought would be dramatically cheaper weren’t. Or if they were, they came with trade-offs we weren’t willing to make.

We realized that the life we had spent years building: a small homestead, a close-knit community, easy access to family, and the ability to get to a grocery store, hospital, or Target within twenty minutes, was actually far more valuable than we’d been giving it credit for.

The circumstances hadn’t changed. Our perspective had.

Making Friends Is a Mindset

Another example I’ll use to show the power of a perspective shift is I experienced something similar a few years ago after Josh left the military. When you’re part of a military community, friendships often happen naturally. You’re surrounded by people in similar seasons of life, and relationships form quickly.

A couple years after we moved back to Maryland, I started to feel like I didn’t have any friends. Two of my best friends still lived in the area but getting our schedules to match up was difficult sometimes.  And I remember talking to the Lord about it.

His response was so simple: making friends is a mindset like making money is a mindset.

That really shook me as I realized I was being passive about making friends. I called myself an introvert, and told myself that I avoided meeting new people because I didn’t like it. Well then duh… of course I don’t have a ton of friends. It completely changed the way I approached relationships.

Instead of focusing on what I didn’t have, I started appreciating the friendships I did have. I became more intentional about reaching out to people, following up, inviting people into my life, and viewing new connections as potential friendships. 

About 6 months later I found myself thinking “wow, I have so many friends” only to realize that I still just had the two really close friends. But I had opened myself up to new friendships and that was the perspective shift I needed.

Years later, I found myself taking an online lifestyle assessment for a class and realized that social connection had become THE strongest area of my life.

I shared some more examples in the actual podcast episode, but I think you get the idea here.

 

Sometimes We Want a New Life When We Need a New Lens

I think we do this in so many areas of life. We assume someone else’s lifestyle would make us happier. We assume another job, another city, another relationship, another opportunity, or another circumstance would solve the problem.

And sometimes it might.

But sometimes what we really need is a closer look.

Sometimes we need to stop idealizing what someone else has and take the time to understand what it actually costs. Other times, we need to stop assuming something is impossible and discover that it’s far more attainable than we realized.

A perspective shift has a way of revealing both.

What If Nothing Needs to Change?

One of the questions I’ve started asking myself whenever I feel frustrated or dissatisfied is this:

What if nothing needs to change except the way I’m looking at it?

Not because every circumstance is perfect. Not because hard things don’t exist. But because gratitude has a remarkable ability to reveal things we’ve overlooked. Sometimes the breakthrough we’re waiting for isn’t on the other side of a changed circumstance.

Sometimes the breakthrough comes when we begin seeing the same circumstance differently. And often, that’s where everything starts to change.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been feeling frustrated, stuck, or disappointed lately, it might be worth pausing long enough to ask yourself whether the problem is the circumstance, or the perspective. You may discover that the very thing you’ve been wishing would change has blessings you’ve been unable to see. In fact, oftentimes we’re living in a season we once prayed for but we’re too busy trying to get to the next season to see it.

Maybe that’s the invitation today.

Before wishing for different circumstances, ask yourself if there might be another way to see the ones you’re already living.

Not every situation can (or should) be viewed through rose-colored glasses. When I make a post or share thoughts like this, without fail, I get the person who says they only have 3 months left to live or they’re partner just died and how does that apply to them?… it doesn’t. Some seasons really are hard. And there are circumstances, grief, terminal illness, devastating loss, where the ordinary rules of daily life simply don’t apply. Survival moments aren’t the moments I’m talking about here.

In fact, if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that there’s nothing quite like facing death to remind us how precious life really is. Those seasons have a way of stripping everything else away and bringing incredible clarity to what truly matters. In those seasons, you need to do what you need to do. Sometimes that means simply making it through the day. And that’s enough.

But for many of us, most days aren’t life-or-death moments. They’re ordinary Tuesdays. They’re frustrating jobs, houses that don’t feel quite big enough or fancy enough to be IG worthy, friendships we wish looked different, or seasons that aren’t unfolding the way we imagined they would.

Those are often the moments where perspective has the power to change everything. Sometimes gratitude reveals blessings we overlooked. Sometimes curiosity uncovers possibilities we assumed weren’t there. And sometimes the breakthrough we’re waiting for begins not with changed circumstances, but with changed eyes.

All my love,

Allison Sue

P.S. Want something more to read? Check out this post I wrote about How to Not Let Things Bother You (Even When They’re Little)