Put Distance: Relativize Things To Find New Perspectives

Sometimes we need it: to put distance, but not to get away from everyone and everything. We do it to see ourselves from another perspective, to detach ourselves from that “I” somewhat eroded, touched by apathy. We need to give ourselves a new impulse, to find from the void or the distance those hidden strengths that must be reawakened and reoriented.

To understand this idea, let’s think about something very simple that we do every day: look up and leave our eyes at a certain point in the sky, in our city, in a park. In the distance. Experts in work ergonomics remind us, for example, that it is recommended that every 15 or 20 minutes we take our eyes off our computers and look up over the monitor itself.

That visual distance generates rest. Likewise, putting distance from ourselves, at a certain moment, also generates psychological and emotional well-being. However, how do you do that of distancing yourself from your own being? Wherever we go, our thoughts, essences and the weight of our entire existence are still there, like an excess of suffocating baggage, like a tireless rumor that prevents us from thinking clearly.

You do not have to travel to Tibet or do a week-long retreat in complete silence to find new perspectives, to detach yourself from your own self and have a conversation with him …

Put distance to meet again

Some people think that putting distance is going on vacation. That the problems lose their bellows and intensity with a week in a spa, with a few days on the shores of a beach with turquoise waters. Well, what we often do with these intervals of placid rest is simply escape, but nothing is solved by putting life on pause in a paradisiacal setting where we limit ourselves to not thinking.

Putting distance does not mean running away or putting kilometers in between before what we dislike or take away our calm. Not if in the end we return to the same point we left before. Lao Tzu used to say that, in reality, there is no greater distance than the one that we establish between our head and our heart. That is, between what our mind persists in making us believe compared to what the heart asks of us.

Thus, something we do very frequently is to strive to give continuity to situations that, far from enriching us personally, rob us of the opportunity to be happy. A job, a relationship, a family environment, all of these are contexts where we often get stuck, attached to negative dynamics. We have put so much distance between ourselves and our true needs that what we urgently need is not a trip or a one-time getaway. We need to rediscover ourselves.

Learn to look at ourselves with perspective

We must learn to put distance to meet again, to see life in perspective. Vicktor Frankl, father of logotherapy and survivor of several German concentration camps, explains this to us in his book  The Doctor and the soul. From time to time, it is necessary to shape a kind of detachment from what surrounds us to regain our sense of freedom, our potential and in turn, remember what our purposes are.

Most of the time we are prisoners of our own thoughts. This scenario is almost like a windowless jail, a hostile environment where it is very difficult to know what is outside. For this reason, and to facilitate the aforementioned detachment, we must make contact with our emotions to find enough momentum to generate a change.

These would be some steps to achieve it, to shape that personal distance from which to find greater inner clarity.

Establish distance from yourself to make decisions

Establishing a position of observation about oneself is a therapeutic strategy that can be very useful to us. It consists of climbing a few steps above ourselves to look at ourselves from above in a loving, warm and humble way. It is like a game where we become self-observers to reflect on where we are in our life and what we want to do with it.

• Get on the balcony of your consciousness to look at yourself from above, from a distance. Evaluate if what you see pleases you, ask yourself if in a year you would like to see yourself in the same way.
• Reflect on your beliefs and your judgments without the classic defenses of the ego, without those certainties that others have instilled in us and that in some way, have limited us for a long time.
• Check the style of your thoughts, place a negativity detector to warn if the approach you apply to your reality is characterized by constant discomfort, hopelessness, bad mood and apathy.

If what we see from that position of distance does not please us, if we only notice the rumor of negativity and unhappiness, it will be time to think about certain changes. Now, these changes must be orchestrated by our purposes. As Viktor Frankl told us, we must be able to find meaning in our existence and redirect it towards that goal.

Let us therefore not hesitate to distance ourselves from time to time from everything that surrounds us to reach new perspectives. To remember who we are and what motivates us.