How to shift your perspective and keep it all in balance

This was just one of many high points this week. // Sólo uno de los muchos apogeos esta semana.

If I were to ask you how you were doing right now, would the answer be, "fine"?

I was feeling "fine" at the end of last week when I met with my book club virtually (we're an international, multilingual, anti-racism book club, so pandemic aside, we meet on Zoom!). Our leader, my friend Hanna, started us off with a quick check-in, ice-breaker style question. Her prompt to us was,

What was the high point and the low point of your week?

And it got me thinking.

My brain landed on the low point right away: I messed up my lower back (somehow!) after a run, and I'd barely been able to move or sit without a lot of pain for days. Low point. Easy.

Then, I started flipping through for the high points.

I remembered celebrating a friend's birthday last Saturday and getting to go axe-throwing for the first time (so much fun!). I remembered celebrating another friend's birthday on Tuesday and making special memories while sharing delicious sushi. Two birthdays in one week!

I had re-started my live French classes with my French teacher, a Parisian based in Portugal and master story-teller named Alice Ayel, on Monday and my soul was lit up to restart my French language journey.

But the high point I finally settled on was the one that was standing out to me as the most warm and fuzzy: my weekly date night with my husband, where we went out for Peruvian food and sat under heat lamps and string lights eating yummy tequeños de ají de gallina (chicken wontons) and empanadas de lomo (beef empanadas). We just spent quality time together and it felt so nice.

[Today, in fact, is our anniversary, and celebrating the beginning of our third year of marriage is already the high point of this week!] 🥳🥳🥳

This simple question immediately restructured my perspective and put everything into balance.

I realized that I had many high points to choose from in the past seven days. Instead of sitting in front of my computer for book club with pain in my lower back and feeling just "fine", I realized I felt so much more than fine. I felt GREAT.

I remind myself and my students of this all the time:

Our brains are natural problem-solvers.

Meaning, they look for problems. Then they focus on them almost exclusively in an attempt to solve them.

This can throw everything out of balance.

Our problems and "low points" appear huge, because we're spending all our time thinking about them. Our high points get totally forgotten the moment they're over, because our brain's looking for the next problem to solve.

We can shift our perspective and restore balance by directing our attention to the high AND the low points.

You may be having a week with more low points than high, and that's okay. Balance does not mean 50/50 equilibrium; it simply means we weigh everything together. There will be weeks that swing the other way. What if you shifted to the high and low points of your month? Of your year?

Don't settle for just fine. Don't let your (well-intentioned) problem-solving brain create a default perspective that doesn't serve you. 

Living your best bilingual life starts the moment you shift your perspective.

Your language coach,

Join me in my latest episode of #SpanishSaturday below to practice shifting our perspective together, and to practice your bilingual skills in conversation with me!

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