“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust.

A few years ago, I visited my school in Mumbai where I spent a major part of my formative years as a child. In my mind, my school was always this imposing gargantuan structure with massive corridors, huge airy classrooms, gigantic halls and vast playgrounds. When I saw it after all those years as an adult, I was disappointed to see that it was nothing like I remembered it. The almost “Hogwarts-esque” monumental structure of my memories turned out to be a medium-sized ordinary building with small corridors and compact classrooms. The fact is, it was not the building but my perspective that had changed. As a child, not only are we physically small and hence tend to perceive things around us as comparatively larger, but also over the years, we are exposed to other structures, other cities, other countries and acquire a whole new scale of comparison. When that happens, we tend to see things from our past with new eyes and a different perspective.

Throughout my career in the Service Industry – from call centres to BPOs, to KPOs, to GCCs and now as a Consultant for GCCs, I have realized that life is all about perspectives. Problems arise when you are unwilling to change your perspective of looking at things and hesitate in accepting the existence of multidimensional realities showing different sides to people watching from diverse vantage points. Highly restrictive unidimensional opinions with myopic views of complicated issues hamper creative instincts that are of paramount importance in solving problems and improving products & processes.

Outside of work too, perspectives play an important part, especially where interpersonal relationships are concerned. Which is why it is so important to put yourself in the other person’s shoes before blaming them blatantly for things gone wrong. The world is full of instances where staunch beliefs have led to regressive mindsets and continuous conflicts between thought processes that refuse to change. The ongoing war between generations is a classic example where neither are willing to accept the fact that they are what they are because of the global situation that they were born in – not that they had a choice.

Failures from one viewpoint can look like an ultimate loss whereas from another angle can look like perfect recipes for success. A glass can be half empty for some, half full for others. A problem can either be a hurdle or a challenge. Life is like those optical illusions. You can choose your vision and derive your own meaning from it. At the same time, you can change your vision as many times as you want because life has infinite dimensions. You can make it as difficult or as easy as you want it to be.

Imagine those times when people thought that the earth was flat and if we could travel far enough, we would reach the edge. Imagine those who did travel far enough but never reached that edge. Imagine the immense paradigm shift in their thought process when someone discovered that the earth is actually round but it is so large compared to our puny selves that we perceive it as flat. Imagine them wondering about how we manage not to fall off before gravity was discovered. Also imagine the extreme change in mindsets required when mankind moved away from their perception of earth as the centre of the universe to the sun as the centre of the solar system and we being a minute part of the whole. It is not just a matter of rational thinking but a tremendous amount of mental strength to even reimagine something as colossal as this. But by doing so, look at the progress that we have made today not only in the field of space science but in all other related areas.

Another striking example relatively closer to the present day where a shift in perspective led to an unthinkable solution for a seemingly intractable problem is the discovery of the double helix. For decades before that, scientists had struggled to understand the structure of the DNA till Rosalind Franklin, using a different approach stopped focusing on it as a complex protein but rather looked at it through a different lens altogether – the lens of x-ray diffraction – and perceived it as a comparatively simpler, more regular kind of molecule. Along with Watson & Crick’s physical models, her findings led to the groundbreaking discovery of the double helix which today has unlocked a plethora of knowledge in the area of genetics.

So next time you face a challenge that puts you in a doubt.

Just flip the problem upside down or turn it inside out.

“Alice: If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. What it is it wouldn’t be, and what wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” – Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)