The Bigger Picture

The Bigger Picture

Many people come into my office with problems—some greater, some small. But never is there a time when the focus isn’t on “what to do to fix the problem” or “how to effect change in the client’s mind.”

I spend time listening. As I do so, I look at the big picture in that person’s life. I know that if I can find a greater reason for the problem than what the person focuses on, then I will be able to convince him or her to begin to look at the objective from a different perspective. In so doing, I get the client to come out of the ego long enough to hear the message of healing.

The only way to heal is to come out of the ego paradigm to an omniscient perspective. We rarely know the reason behind why people treat us the way they do; why murders and crimes happen; why natural devastation occurs; why life just seems to happen without our control. To get to see what is unknown in our problems is to see a bigger, more compassionate perspective.

I go back to a time in my personal life when I didn’t understand a grave hurt. My best friend for ten years had decided he just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. At least, that’s what I thought—what I assumed. After twenty years of believing that tale, I contacted him on Facebook. We started out with small talk. Eventually, one day I asked him what had been on my heart for years. “Why did you quit talking to me? What happened?”

The circumstance was completely different than I expected. His wife, at the time was jealous of our friendship. She told my best friend that I was trying to manipulate him. She also stole every letter I sent and erased messaged on the answering machine. My friend never knew why I stopped contacting, either, until that day twenty years later.

Could I have avoided the pain I felt in that moment twenty years ago if I could have come out of the ego and stood in a compassionate observer place of no judgment? I’m not sure. I know that the pain would have lessened. I may have been able to compartmentalize the problem and ask spirit for advice, instead of reacting. My reaction—deciding that he didn’t want to speak to me anymore, because I didn’t hear back from him several times—was a part of the fear of rejection in me.

Had I believed in myself and in our friendship, I may have tried to call him at work or contact him in another way, before I completely rejected him. In short, I gave up on my friend, because I was afraid he was rejecting me. That’s the bigger picture.

Recently, he came to visit me in Nashville. We had the best time ever. I couldn’t believe how much time we had wasted in the ambivalence caused by an angry and jealous wife.

The bigger picture is always the place of healing. Whether it is trying to find a compassionate reason why someone would act the way he had or simply having compassion for yourself and creating better and bigger boundaries.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com. FOR COMMENTS: Go to the Bo Sebastian link under the title and there is a place there to create a comment. Thanks.

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