“As we alter our perception, we can change our emotions.” -Daniel Goleman

I watched Rory Sutherland’s TED Talk about perspective today. It’s a great talk and I totally agree with his ideas.

“In a party, when you can’t smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you’re an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you’re a philosopher,” Rory opened his talk. Everybody’s laughing and everybody’s agree.

Perspective or shall I say perception is finally define the reality of what we see.

I was doing a weekend trip to several cities in Central Java last weekend and doing talks about business and also about creative writing. One of my friends said, “Don’t you have time for yourself?” I was shocked with her remarks.

In her perception, what I did = working and that must be tiring working on weekends. While in my perspective, I’m doing this to share my knowledge and hopefully will be useful for young people in my country. Most of the talks I did are for non-profits, universities, schools. Speaking and sharing is the time for myself. It’s my ‘me time’. I enjoy every single seconds of it.

Of course I can also treat this as a job. But that will make me very very tired. I had tight schedules and barely had time to breath. But my perspective keep me happy and strong physically.

Try shifting your perspective into a more positive and empowering point of view.

Rory also made an excellent point about three aspects to solving a problem:

Technical – Psychology – Economics

He gave example of Eurostar train from Paris – London. Instead of using billions of dollars to add technology in the train so it will arrive 45 minutes faster, why EuroStar didn’t invest in giving WiFi on the train so the journey will be more enjoyable and time become measured in relative way. Or, use some of the money to hire good looking models to walk every 10 minutes inside the train, he jokes. That’s how to use technical, psychology and economics approach to solve a problem.

Now, time to think how to solve Jakarta messy traffic problems using this method :))