This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Power" by Rhonda Byrne. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What is a positive perspective of life? How can you develop this better outlook?
When your feelings are on a positive frequency, you have a positive perspective of life. You can get a new perspective on life by ignoring the negative things you don’t want and showing love for what you have achieved.
Read more to discover how you can develop a new perspective on life.
A New Perspective of Life
Before we move on to ways to strengthen your love power, you must understand the type of mindset that leads to a happy life. This piece presents considerations that help you develop a new perspective on life so the power of love is always working in your favor. These considerations include how to understand and manage your life experiences, how to rewrite your story, and how to expand your thoughts about what’s possible.
Life’s Catalogue
The pictures of your life that you see were drawn with either a yes pencil or no pencil. That’s because life presented things to you as options, and you likely either chose yes or no. But if you learn to simply ignore what you don’t want, rather than choosing “no,” you can stay on a positive frequency.
Think about looking at a clothing catalogue. You flip a page and see a green sweater. You either choose to buy it or flip to the next page without much thought. The aspects of life are the same as that green sweater.
When life puts something in front of you, it’s like flipping the page. You can either say, “Yes, I want that,” or, “No, I don’t want that.” Whatever choice you make is what will be brought to your life.
- When you say “yes,” you put love toward that thing and create a positive frequency.
- When you say “no,” you’re not showing that thing love. You’re making a negative judgment about it. That negative judgment creates a negative frequency.
Instead of saying “no,” simply turn the page. Don’t give the things you don’t want power by thinking about why you don’t want them or labeling them in a negative way. Turn away from them without judgment. They don’t belong to you, so don’t call them forth.
Getting a New Perspective on Life
Every time you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste something, life is presenting you with a choice. When you walk down the street and see a beautiful house, life is asking, “Would you like this house?” How you feel in that moment is the most important choice you can make.
- If you feel absolute love for the house, you start the process of bringing that house to you.
- If you feel jealous or bad that you don’t have the house, you just erased the picture of you in that house.
There are many examples of life presenting things to you:
- When you see a couple acting romantically at a restaurant, life is presenting you with romance. If you feel love for the couple, you tell life, “I love romance. Look how beautiful romance is.” If you feel sad and alone, you tell life, “I am sad and alone.” You can only get back the feelings you give out. So you can either receive romance or more ways to be sad and alone.
- If you want to lose weight and see someone with the body you want, you have two options for how to feel. You can show love for that body, or you can resent the person for having the body you don’t have.
- If your friend wins the lottery, you can either celebrate their good fortune and give love, or you can feel bad that you don’t have that much money.
When you feel happy for people and show love for what they have achieved, you bring that achievement to you. You will only feel jealous or bitter about someone else’s success if you wish you had the same thing. Otherwise, you would feel indifferent. Develop a new perspective on life by seeing other people’s success as a frequency offered to you. Your choice of whether to get on it or not depends entirely on how you choose to feel.
What You Don’t Know About the World
You think you understand the world because of what you see and experience. But the world you believe to be real is not the real world. The world and the universe are greater than what you understand them to be. Things like time and space are illusions, and resources seem finite only because your view is limited to what you witness.
But there is no finite amount of success, money, work, health, or love that you must fight for or miss out on. There is an unlimited amount of opportunity for everyone and an unlimited amount of time to use your power to create a good life.
Just because you can’t see something or feel something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
- You believe the sky is blue because that’s what you see. In fact, the spectrum of colors exists in all things. The color you see is the reflection created when all the other colors have been absorbed.
- Soundwaves sometimes have such a high frequency, you can’t hear them, like dog whistles or radio waves. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You can’t hear them, but they still make a sound.
What you choose to believe informs the world you live in. If you believe life is full of limitations, then you will live a limited life. If you believe life merely happens to you, that’s the life you will live. If you believe you have the power to activate the law of attraction and create the world you want, you will. Expand your perspective to expand your life.
Your Choices Only Affect You
The law of attraction has one perspective, and it revolves around you. There is no one else in your universe as far as it is concerned because you are the only person the law of attraction responds to.
Another way of thinking about this is that the law of attraction is the law of you. It doesn’t matter what someone else does to you or how someone else makes you feel. Your feelings are the only thing the law of attraction receives, and you’re the only one who will receive what you give.
If someone else has what you want, the law of attraction doesn’t care. It cares about whether or not you give love or negativity to that person or what they have. Don’t worry about someone else’s story. You only have control over yours.
Your Story Is Yours to Write
If you had to sit down and tell the tale of your life, what does it sound like?
- Is it full of successes and potential? Do you include all the things you desire and the person you want to become?
- Do you talk about all your regrets and the things you can’t do? Do you believe there are limitations to your potential?
Whatever story you tell is the story you live. But only one of those stories is true.
There is nothing too good for you in the world. There is nothing beyond the scope of your potential because there is nothing beyond the scope of your imagination.
- If you want to walk on the moon and truly feel that desire in your heart and love it, you’ve created a picture the law of attraction must send back. You may not know the how yet, but people and situations that will lead you to the moon will be brought to your life. And why not?
You can’t predict what will happen in the world, so why assume something is impossible when life is full of infinite possibilities?
Your new perspective on life shouldn’t take in other people’s version of your story. Their feelings don’t have to be your feelings, and they shouldn’t be. Those people are not the ones receiving the consequences of your negative thoughts and feelings. You are.
Also, if you feel like you’ve taken missteps or behaved badly in the past, that’s okay. Acknowledge your mistakes and move forward. The awareness and acceptance of your past bad feelings or actions are enough to erase them from today. Let go of anything about your life story you don’t like, including resentments against your parents, friends, or lovers. Toss the old pictures to the side, and create new pictures of the life you want reflected back to you.
The moment you develop a new perspective on life is the moment your life becomes different. Make your story the best story it can be. Tell yourself how amazing your life story is. Why sell your life short by saying otherwise?
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Rhonda Byrne's "The Power" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full The Power summary :
- How you can have whatever you want in life simply by feeling love for it
- How to form a lasting and powerful relationship with the universe
- Tips for harnessing the power of the force of love
