Perspective

What we see is not what actually is, just what we can understand. To put this in a different way: if you're in the problem, you can't really see it but you can certainly feel the pain it causes.

Cue for the metaphor about closeness to trees and wood but let's think about this like a storm. When we experience it we all feel the undeniable sting of driven rain and hail and the bite of the lashing wind but that doesn't actually tell us much about the storm itself. A meteorologist on the other hand, looking at the same storm through their instrumentation sees precipitation percentages and wind shear and chill factor and directional vectors affected directly by ground morphology.

To a meteorologist a storm is an entirely different object. The difference in understanding of the same object we experience presents the meteorologist with an entirely different set of options on how to behave in the face of it.

Business is not dissimilar. The problems we experience have solutions or, at least, can be mitigated through choices and behaviors that become available to us only when we can grasp the magnitude of what we are actually dealing with.

Psychologists call this self-distancing and (The Matrix fans rejoice) Trinity perfectly exemplifies it.

The point is that this shift of perspective can only happen through a conscious (dare I say, intentional) decision to see things differently. It's neither an easy thing to do nor an immediately obvious choice. Nevertheless the moment we change perspective we shift our understanding of our reality and it is that shift that unlocks the larger number of options we seek.

Now that you know all this, you need to consider where you might successfully apply it.