Life Lessons: Pan out your life

I have a habit of talking to my friends whenever I am worried about something and one day, while I was talking on a call, I was continuously babbling about how overwhelmed and confused I was feeling. I went on speaking for two hours and my friend only listened to me patiently.

And then he said, "Be positive. At least, now you know what is happening with your life". And that was such a relief. While he hardly said a word, it felt like he had given me a solution. Actually, it was me who discussed life, criticized it, analyzed it, understood it, and then, also came up with a plan for reshaping my life, all by myself but I had a hearing ear.

Life is full of mysteries and problems but no mysteries and problems are ever solved by just witnessing them like a spectator. If you want to solve a problem, you have to understand it and face, not avoid it, something we rarely do. Most of us are confused or overwhelmed because we do not know where our life is going but whom can we blame? Have we ever took out time to understand what is happening around in our lives?

It is time that you now take a careful look at your life and understand where you stand. Imagine you are holding a camera in your hand, make a gesture of taking a snap with your hands, and pan out your life. The term panning out is actually related to photography or videography. Do know what is a panorama?

When taking a panorama, we take the shot of not just part but a whole 180 or 360-degree landscape by clicking multiple pictures that are automatically merged. Your life is also like a merger of all different things that are happening around you, all at the same time. So, if you want to truly understand what is happening in your life and if it is going in the right direction, use the pan out a method to analyze it.

Here is how you do it – Hold your hand camera and take a frame “ME” and think about yourself and ask yourself if you are happy or not. How do you look in the frame? Happy, sad, obfuscated, frustrated? Whatever is that your face is showing you, draw that on a piece of paper and write ME over it. You can also write sentences to describe your feeling.

Next, you pick your hand camera again and move it a bit. This time, you go to “Family”. Now, explore all things about family – are they happy with you? Are you connected with them? Are you doing enough for them or are guilty of not giving them your time? How do you think your family looks? Broken, together, happy, motivated? Draw it.

Move on. Take more snapshots of your life. As many as you can. And when you will be finished, your whole life would be panned out in front of you. You will know what you are doing, what is happening, what is good, what is going wrong, where are you missed, what you are lacking, and so on.

Knowing yourself and understanding your life is the first step to bringing a change in your life. If you are not satisfied with your life already, this is an exercise that you must do the uncover undetected problems of your life, and then, you can start working on them to solve so you can improve your life, relations, and everything happening around you. 

If you are interested in discovering how you can solve problems in your life, you might want to read One Problem at a time

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