What is a Perceptual Shift? Create a Shift in Perception
What is a perceptual shift? It occurs when you can see a circumstance through a new lens. Read on to learn how to create a shift in your perception.
The question that people always ask me is, “what is a perceptual shift?” A perceptual shift occurs when you can see a circumstance through a different lens. This new view changes the narrative around the circumstance, bringing a new understanding or meaning to it. When your perception shifts, the world around you also shifts. This is not because the world has changed, but because the way that you experience it has changed. It allows you to take in different flavors of your environment, yourself, and others around you.
This is an important experience because it opens new opportunities for you to create change without necessarily needing to physically change your surroundings. When your perception shifts, you start to think, behave, and speak differently. This creates a vibrational shift to materially change your physical and lived experiences. You can allow yourself to move differently because you have changed yourself on an energetic level, and the rearranging happens naturally from there.
How I Created a Shift in My Perception About My Experience with Chronic Illness
I really tapped into personal development and the healing arts because of my own journey with chronic illness, including Fibromyalgia, Lyme Disease, and Sjogren’s Syndrome. At the height of my chronic illness journey, I felt resentment. I was resigned to living my life at a minimum. This meant minimal exercise and interaction with others, minimal ability to do, to create, to build. Maximum rest, medication, declining invitations, and pulling myself out of growth opportunities at work.
I saw myself as deficient, unworthy of having the life I truly wanted.
As I started to reactive my own spiritual and energetic gifts, I was asked to look at chronic illness in a different way. I began to see chronic illness as a symptom of a greater energetic imbalance. That the uncomfortable, exhausting, and foggy physical experience was informing me that there was something out of alignment in my lifestyle, my environment, my work, or in my relationships. This symptom [chronic illness flare ups] would crop up as my body’s way of asking me to slow down, stop, go inward, and map out when, where, and with whom I felt these symptoms most keenly. From there, I could choose the aligned action to take…and watch my symptoms disappear, sometimes quickly, and sometimes slowly over time.
For example, I could experiment with separating myself from my corporate work and notice that a stomachache, anxiety, brain fog, and exhaustion would give way to clarity, more physical comfort, and peace. In understanding that the corporate environment is triggering chronic illness symptoms, I could then look to understand why. Is it the company itself? The people within it? Is it causing me to violate my own boundaries? Are coworkers asking me to violate my boundaries? Is the work feeling fulfilling, or is it pulling me further away from my zone of genius and taking me out of flow? Is the energetic exchange between me and the business equitable?
In answering those questions, I can understand if there is a simple adjustment needed, or if I need to pull myself out of that environment entirely to get back into alignment.
Shifting my perception of what chronic illness means about me and my potential – something to be managed, fearful of, that made me less-than – to what chronic illness is asking me to see – where am I out of alignment, too loose in my boundaries, or not being appropriately valued – eliminated fear, reduced the number and length of flare ups, and helped me to see that I can create a rich life in partnership with chronic illness.
I appreciate that everyone’s chronic illness journey is different, and I have been blessed that mine, for the most part, has been relatively gentle.
Having the ability to shift my perception alchemized my experience and changed how I move through the world. It opened a portal for me to help others with similar experiences.
The Importance of a Perceptual Shift
Your perception, ultimately, creates your reality.
However.
This phrase is often weaponized, so I want to make something clear: how other people perceive you is none of your business. Nor is it your job to change their perception of you. Just because someone tells you they see your behavior a certain way, without the curiosity to understand what is behind the behavior, does not mean that they are correct.
Now, you may wish to have an open mind about their perception if you feel they are reflecting something back to you that you want to understand more deeply. But it is not your job to change who you are to make someone else more comfortable.
I was once told that I was perceived as being negative, and my eyes welled up with tears. When I explained that I was trying to be realistic, to ask for help where I did not have expertise, and to make sure I was focused on the right things, the perception shifted. I took it as an opportunity to be clearer in my communication, but I continued to follow my intuition to focus on what I felt really mattered.
When you want to change your reality, you need to understand how you are perceiving your reality and why. We have lifetimes that have informed our thinking and our perception, the way we see and translate the world. Perception and reality are always shifting around us. When we become conscious and intentional about it, we have the gift of experiencing life the way that we want to most, or much, of the time.
Certainly, there are things and experiences that are out of our control. Ultimately, we are the ones with the power to decide how we process them and how we allow it to shift our perceptions of the world.
Journal Prompts to Induce a Perceptual Shift
The mind is a powerful tool for physical and energetic transformation. It is the seat of our perceptions and the key to creating new ones. All you have to do is breathe, find a little bit of quiet, and start asking yourself questions. Like:
How am I perceiving my reality now?
Why am I perceiving my reality this way?
How do I want to perceive my reality?
What is preventing me from shifting my perception?
What new belief do I need to have to shift my perception?
What aligned action will help me safely shift my perception?
You are the only one who can answer these questions, and curiosity is the greatest inducement for a perceptual shift. When you start asking these questions, your mind starts looking for answers and possibilities. Memories may float to the surface, you may experience more deja vu, or find yourself in beautifully kismet situations.
So, what perception are you desiring to shift? It’s time to get started.
