Week 3: Appreciate Your Own Perspective

Sometimes it’s more difficult to see what’s right about ourselves than what’s wrong. While it may seem like a selfish starting point, it is integral that we appreciate our own view on life and how it was formed, in order to respect and appreciate the perspectives of others.

If you can grasp the filter through which you assess and process life, then you begin to understand how others do the same, in a way that is distinct from you. When you can fully grasp the depths and heights to which you’ve traveled to reach your current viewpoint, you are less likely to judge another for how they see the world ... no matter how vastly different it is from what you see.

The most important point is to recall that we each have a unique perspective on life and that each of these perspectives has value—like providing a multidimensional view on a single topic. When we take the time to understand and respect the perspectives of others, we are able to better serve them, and we accelerate our own personal and professional growth.

The sense of common humanity inherent to self-appreciation means that we appreciate ourselves not because we’re better than others, but because all people have goodness in them. When we can enjoy what’s good about our perspective, acknowledging that all people have strengths as well as weaknesses, we can live life with a better more well rounded perspective of humankind as a whole.