Do you sometimes think you (or maybe someone else) haven’t accomplished much?
When someone else completes an impressive task, do you compare yourself and feel less-than? When you zoom in on the small stuff, it might look that way.
If your default is to wonder what was less-than-good, try
stepping beyond yourself and looking at the bigger picture.
Can you see a WOW version of your or the other person’s accomplishments? Yes, in the picture below, that’s a big rock behind my head. And in the second picture, from a different vantage point, I can see that WOW! I hiked really high up! When I saw Half Dome in Yosemite N.P. from all the way across the valley, I realized I had overcome injuries, physical challenges, and mental doubts.
Still, I could say: (But I disagree in the parentheses)
- Other people did this faster or with less effort (True, and that does not diminish my accomplishment)
- I had a guide who brought the food and who knew the trail (True, and I had to do the work of climbing and keeping up)
- I was exhausted after my five days in Yosemite (True, and I hiked over 40 miles, much of it at elevation)
Think of it this way. In the painting technique pointillism, small dots of pure color are used to create entire works of art. If you stand close, they look like, well, colored dots. But when you step back, that’s when the magic happens.
Here is another example. I’ve posted to three different social media channels daily for the past three years. One day at a time, that’s three. Not that impressive. Altogether, that’s about 1100 posts that I have created. One-thousand one-hundred. That’s a lot of colored dots! (See what I mean here, at the bottom of the page.)
Can you see the incredible WOW that’s hiding in plain view?
What small things in your life are actually big things when you zoom out?
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