Why Your Perspective Throughout Your Entire Life Matters

The Perspective you have as a younger adult contributes to your perspective as an older adult in extreme ways.

When younger people look at older adults they often don’t realize that they have lived a life before that point. An outside perspective might just see them as an older person.

However, that outside perspective often overlooks how much our younger years contribute to our older life. Our experiences shape our opinions and ideas on what a fulfilling life looks like. By the time we reach the age of about 65, we really begin looking back on what we have done with our lives.

Once you begin reflecting do you like what you see or do feel unsettled?

Now, if you haven’t reached your 65th birthday just yet don’t go away because this article applies to you too. It doesn’t matter if you are 20, 37, or 85, our perspective is always important and plays a huge role in your happiness.

This will be helpful for anyone to understand how your perspective through the years contributes to old age.

When we begin to age our mind does one of two things. It either goes to a place of despair towards the life we have lived or goes to a place of content over what we have accomplished.

Despair towards your life feels like you haven’t accomplished enough, had enough personal achievement, experienced enough great things, and/or that you still need to fix past mistakes before you die.

When you feel content about what you have done with your life it is called ego integrity. With ego integrity, we feel accomplished, we are able to look back on our life experiences with a sense of pride and acceptance.

A major difference between these two types of mindsets is an individual’s perspective.

Your perspective is the attitude you hold towards something. It is the point of view you have, in this case, it is your point of view on your life.

If you are constantly focusing on what you haven’t accomplished, bad experiences, and are stuck on the mistakes of your past you will find despair in your older life. This type of perspective looks at everything that has gone wrong.

If you are always working on addressing the negative but then move out of it to look at what has gone right in your life by appreciating what you have rather than what you don’t, you will most likely find ego integrity in your older life.

Based on these two perspectives, which do you have? Do a little self-reflection to figure out if you are focusing on the negative or the positive.

Whichever perspective you determined you have will most likely remain the same throughout your life. If you are older, can you think about if you have always had that perspective, or has it changed?

Unless we experience a major life event that changes our perspective or we make a conscious effort to flip our mind’s script, it will most likely remain the same. However, hopefully after reading this, you will understand the importance of having a good perspective.

Now, how do those perspectives affect you in your younger life?

A lot of people don’t understand how the energy you put out into the world is the energy you receive in return. If you see the world as never giving you anything and you are stuck with no way out — that is what will happen.

The thoughts that prevail are the ones you give power to and the type of perspective you have is a big indicator of what those thoughts will be.

When we are younger, many people think that they are invincible and that there is no need to change the way you look at the world because it’s the world that needs changing not you.

The thing is, the world can only change when our perspectives change. That’s why the energy you put out and the thoughts you think are so important to your perspective.

It all starts in your younger years which is why this article is for everyone. It is easiest to morph your perspective when you are younger because you aren’t as stuck in your ways. You are more open to learning new things because you want to live the best life you can. Therefore, learn how to change your perspective now for the sake of your older self.

It can be difficult because you can only think the thoughts that you give power to, whether it be your own or from an outside source. Additionally, you can’t go further than the love you give yourself thus your perspective on life is a reflection of your perspective on yourself.

Therefore, if you want to change your perspective so you can stop being faced with the negative and avoid despair in old age, you have to learn how to love yourself and forgive yourself for the mistakes of your past which involves addressing the pain that comes from those mistakes.

If you are older and are past that the more malleable time in your life, it’s not too late to change your perspective to a more positive outlook. It may be more difficult but it is far from impossible. Plus it is worth it to live out the time you have left happy with what you have accomplished. It might help to start small by appreciating that you are still alive today despite the hardship you have gone through.

A great activity to help change your perspective, that you can do at any age, is to create a gratitude list.

A gratitude list will help you find the things throughout your entire life that you are thankful for, putting your experiences into perspective. You can do this a few different ways:

1. Make a gradual gratitude list and implement it into your morning or night routine. Add 2–3 things you are grateful for from your entire life every day so it becomes a habit. In my opinion, this will have the best long-lasting effects because you are doing it over a period of time.
2. You can do the same thing as above in one sitting, every week, or as often as you feel you need it. If you find yourself going back to that negative perspective figure out why you are going back there, work on releasing it and then come back to that gratitude list to challenge those negative thoughts and remind yourself of the positive.
3. Choose a certain experience to find gratitude in. If a particular moment in your life is where your negative mindset keeps bringing you back, you need to work through it. You will need to do more than making a gratitude list for this as it is most likely deeper work that needs to happen, but you can start with this. What was the lesson you learned? Who was brought into your life? What skills did you acquire? Did you survive? *remember you need to let yourself feel the negative feelings and not ignore them so do that before making this list.

Overall, our perspective affects us at all ages of development. What you give power to will persist until you decide to break the cycle. It is important to learn how to change your perspective when you are younger so you will feel less despair as you are aging. However, even if you are aging you can still work on shifting your perspective.

Sincerely,

Skylar Sustin

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