With the end of the year approaching, objects in the rear-view are closer than they appear.

What did I do well this year? What could I have done better? What experiences did I want to repeat and what did I want to mitigate? What did I learn? What did I teach others? Interestingly, what intrigued me most wasn’t my list of answers but the multitudes of ways in which my experiences could be perceived. How did I perceive it at the time? How do I perceive it now? My perspective in the moment and my perspective (s) with distance and clarity.

Yoga asks us to search for clarity and aims to move us beyond illusions and distractions which hide our truest self from ourselves. Translation: Don’t believe everything you think. Clarity of mind has a profound impact on perspective. Visualize a creek where the water is clear and you can see the bottom. If you grab a stick and stir the creek bed up, the water gets cloudy and the bottom is no longer visible but you know the bottom is still there.

Distance, stillness, age and life experience can all affect our relationship to our perception the same way in mountain pose the surroundings look one way but in headstand they look another. The surroundings didn’t change but our relationship to them did. As Wayne Dyer said, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

Perceptions are what we interpret and our interpretations create our perspective, or point of view. Perceptions also create our emotions. And let’s face it, emotions can come and go in an instant. Imagine a snow globe. When you shake it all the snowflakes float around and cloud up the picture, but when you stop shaking it, it gets clear again. We chose to shake it or not. Therefore we choose what we see, cloudiness or clarity.

Emotions are like those snowflakes, energy in motion. Sometimes the snowflakes cloud our perception and alter our perspective. The snowflakes can distract us from the knowledge we have the power to choose how we want to perceive the snowflakes. Standing on our feet, standing on our head, or trying out both and having a more informed view?

Half empty or half full was never the point, the point is the glass is refillable. The new year reminds me the glass is refillable.