I’m grateful for my consideration of other perspectives. I honestly never knew how much of a gift this was until now. I keep watching people not willing to listen to each other and insist on their own way, which by my definition of love, is not love. So when we are not willing to listen, we are just feeding our own fear of the other. Just another way to feed the energy of fear, lack, and separation. We can do this in our relationships and our judgments of whoever we determine the OTHER is. If we think we are better or less than that OTHER, we disempower ourselves.

I choose to live in the energy of love, abundance, and peace as much as possible. That is where my perspectives of belief come from. I’ve read, heard, and listened to countless people express their perspectives from a place of fear, lack, and separation and love, abundance, and peace. The one thing that can feed both energy groups is feeling HEARD and understood. This DOES NOT mean we will agree. Once I’ve listened to someone, I get the opportunity to ask questions and insight critical thinking. I get the opportunity to share my perspectives. If they choose to attack me for my perspectives, I have the opportunity to call on my healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries and considering other perspectives go hand in hand for me.

By considering other people’s perspectives, I will look at where they are getting their information. Is it media (perspectives, agenda, facts), courts (facts), public records (facts), conspiracy theorists (perspectives), politicians (perspectives & agenda), direct source (perspective), gossip (misinformation-just imagine the childhood game telephone), religious beliefs (personal perspective that differs from person to person even in the same organizations/groups), science (facts in the moment, agenda, and ever-changing with new information), etc.? I have to use critical thinking. I have to stay current with new science, because the field moves fast. This is why in school we weren’t allowed to use any research that was beyond five years old. I also learned that in some research, results can be skewed due to agenda and method. If we are aligned with fear, lack, and separation, our beliefs are often pigeon-holed to specific sources. I have to remember there is always a human and a human’s perspective coming from a place of love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation behind any information being spread, bought into, and absorbed. In order for me to stay aligned, I HAVE to listen to the information that I’m taking in.

Aligning with love, abundance, and peace allows me to keep my mind open, but it is not a veil of la la and everything is beautiful all the time. Aligning with love, abundance, and peace means keeping a clear head by making sure my energy field can’t be manipulated by people spewing hate agenda, fear agenda, divide agenda, and victim agenda. These agendas keep me prisoner. I want to make sure I remain free from the evil people in this world who use innocent people to do their bidding. There are plenty of social science experiments that show how good people will do bad things. Staying aligned with love, abundance, and peace keeps me protected from going along with agendas that expand the energy of fear, lack, and separation in the world. This is why I have to consider individual’s perspectives carefully.

Side note: Please, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about someone who is unleashing their energy out on me as a form of abuse or harassment. Healthy boundaries are important to be able to know when my listening will benefit the greater good. I will be talking about healthy boundaries on day #166.

Today, I commit to considering other people’s perspectives. Here is some of the things I ask myself when I’m considering other people’s perspectives:

• Is the person speaking wanting me to align with love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation?
• Does the person speaking have an agenda to have power over the way I think?
• How is my body reacting to what I’m hearing?
• How many people or institutions do I have to believe or not to believe to go along with their perspective?
• Is the person I’m listening to take accountability and responsibility for what is theirs or do they shift blame?
• Does the person want me to put them on a pedestal (RED FLAG)?
• Do they have public record, court, or scientific proof to go along with their perspective (shown, not spoken)?
• Is this person engaging in gossip to spread their information?
• Am I feeling aligned with love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation while engaging with this person? WHY?
• What are other perspectives within their group saying (the one’s that don’t agree)?
• Does the person have compassion, empathy, and forgiveness or do they push victim mentality, revenge, and us against them mindsets?
• Is the person open or close-minded?
• Is the person willing to listen and/or consider other perspectives of thought?
• Does this person want me to hate a group of people? How does me hating the group of people give them power and create me to feel separate, divided, or victimized?
• Is the person wanting me to focus on problems (fear, lack, and/or separation) or solutions (abundance- considering choices and options)?

If you are going to do this for yourself, make sure you have your definitions of fear, lack, and separation and love, abundance, and peace in front of you, but if your perspective of these definitions is skewed, so will how you perceive anything you hear. It’s important to be in a peaceful place and see how your body reacts to the definitions. If you’ve been following along on this journey, I’ve already given you tools to do this.

These questions may seem like a lot in the beginning, but they all become very natural. I use these practices every day. Considering perspectives keeps my critical thinking mind working. Some of the places beyond my personal relationships, I started realizing doing this was so important in considering politics, media, and religion. The group itself isn’t bad or good. The people within the group can be aligned with love, abundance, and peace or fear, lack, and separation. Knowing the difference is essential for me to know if I align with a person’s energy or not. A person who is aligned with fear, lack, and separation to the point of a psychosis like Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality disorder—that person can use any venue to manipulate, abuse, and harass people because their personal agenda of power and control.

Example: If I believe that all media, politicians, or religion is bad, I’m living in the energy of fear, lack, and separation, because I refuse to see the humanity in the people within the group/field. I just need to use my critical thinking. I know that I’m looking for specific characteristics, which is one of the many reasons that I like studying people, because I don’t want to give my power away like I have before. In religion, I would see how some of the leaders would use shame tactics (fear, lack, and separation) and others would use love and compassion (love, abundance, and peace) to get their congregation to follow them. They could be from the same overall group, but the person leading took different approaches to how they interpreted and preached.

Years ago in the US, political parties and power grabs for position within a party became so based in fear, lack, and separation that I had a very hard time understanding where candidates actually stood. I didn’t understand how they could say such hateful things, then say, okay now let’s come together. To me, that is like my best friend telling me that she is being abused by her partner, then making up and telling me that I can trust him again…REALLY?! This is how adults leading our country are behaving. There are a lot of people behind a campaign, it is not just the candidate. So, I learned to dig deeper. I know the other side has an agenda for me not to like the other candidate, so I’m not going to go to them to determine what I believe about them. I dig into public records, court records, and voting history. I look for words that came out of their own mouths, and what people who have worked, lived, or been in close contact with them say about them. What I found is that individuals on both sides lie and/or choose perspectives of fear, lack, and separation. If a campaign is trying to get me to HATE a person, group, or side…I have to look at the agenda behind why they want me to hate them. My experiences of being abused by a narcissist and studying the disorder is that it has made me believe in actions over words for trust, and when words are used to hate, demean, belittle, abuse, hurt, incite violence, separate, or create victimization, I know that person is wanting me to align with fear, lack, and separation over me to gain control over may thoughts and actions. Many campaigns on both sides have used fear-based tactics.

Side note: For full transparency, I’m an independent voter who votes for the person I feel is most willing to work with the other party, because I believe in “United we stand, divided we fall.” These are my perspectives based on how I choose to live my life. When I sided with a particular party, I noticed that I narrowed my view on what I was willing to look at and hear. I felt like I got swayed too easy when I did that. So for me, it was right for me to take the stance that I did. I actually enjoy researching both sides. This election more than usual. Because of the political climate, there were tons of different very interesting perspectives out there. There were more people looking for more bipartisan politics (i.e. country over party perspectives). For someone who studies people and how their minds work, it was very eye-opening for me to see how people got to where they did. Some of the testimonials from these groups came from thoughtful critical thinking based on a unity perspective. Some came from fear/revenge mindsets, which is a given in today’s climate. Some were people really struggling to prioritize character vs. policy. Many people in these groups fell into this grey area of perspectives that I hadn’t heard much of especially since politics had become so polarized.

With Love, Abundance, and Peace,

©Rachael Wolff 2021

Author of Letters from a Better Me: How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World