A perspective on the Milky Way...

Every once in a while I get these weird thoughts that I like to share with anyone who will read them....So try this one on for size.

The Milky Way, our galaxy, the place that our planet Earth calls home, is but the size of a period, in a book, at a library with shelves five stories high in a building as long as a football field (in comparison to the known universe).

(I know a strange analogy, but stay with me for just a little more.)


That notion actually excites me. Really... I mean it! You know why?
Because it brings perspective to a world that has gotten way – and I say way – out of focus.

We sweat the small stuff. We allow it to become our world, our universe and our galaxy, when really, it is just small stuff. But we allow it to become so big that is clouds the very air we breathe, it smothers our vision and – worst of all – it ruins our bodies and stops us from enjoying the world in which we reside for such a short time.

If (comparatively) the Milky Way is the size of a period in a five-hundred-page book in a gargantuan library, how small is the earth? How small is our continent? How tiny is our country, city, town and street?.... And how small is the problem that you are currently facing, the one that has set up camp in your mind, the one that is threatening to ‘do you in’?


How small is it in comparison to what is really out there?

Perhaps you want to make a big change in your life, or you want to grow your business ten fold. The next step seems too big, too grand - perhaps even insurmountable! But how big is it really when compared to the size of the universe. Even loosing fifty pounds or taking your business to the Forbes list (in perspective) would disappear inside a grain of sand on Oak street beach.

What seems hopelessly large, and impossibly difficult, is often tiny. It is just that we allow it to become (in our mind’s eye) much bigger than it actually is. (It is very hard, after all, for the eyes to see clearly what the mind has gotten so out of focus.) If we think it is bigger than it actually is, then it is bigger than it actually is. Real or not, we have made it real with our minds. So a good way to break this cycle is to look at the problem that you are now facing (health, relationship, business) and place it into a true perspective within the bigger picture.

If it is your health that is an issue, and you think your problems are insurmountable, and healing seems a possibility too large to grasp, find an example that is far bigger than yours (universes bigger), one that has already been solved, and use it to spur you on. Be inspired by the likes of Stephen Hawking, who (over four decades ago) was given two years to live by some of the best doctors in the world. Not only did he prove them wrong and survive, but he also went on to shake the very foundations of science with his brilliant insights and discoveries. Read about folk who thought bigger than their depression, bigger than their illness and bigger than their disability - and then went on to complete the most amazing feats of endurance and strength.


If you think that turning over half a million in your business is too big to contemplate, then read about, talk to and visit businesses that are turning over ten million. And if you are already at ten million and want to expand more, then be inspired by a billion. Be inspired by people who grew their conglomerates from a tiny, nurtured seed. Be inspired by people like Richard Branson who started his billion dollar empire with no capital and a phone box for an office.

It works on a global level or on a local level. I used to write an article a month for a magazine. I secretly wanted to write one a week for several magazines but I always felt that writing one really good article a week was a bit too much of a challenge (what with all the other plates I was spinning), until my friend John Thomas told me that he intended to write one article a day for the several blogs and magazines that he regularly contributes content to.

One a day!... Suddenly, one a month seemed lazy and one a week seemed positively achievable.

There are examples out there ready for you to find that will put your problems (or what the Chinese would call ‘opportunities’) into perspective. And when the perspective changes, the world will change with it. What seems massive today will be very manageable tomorrow, and tomorrow’s goals will seem positively minute – perhaps the size of a period in a book of five-hundred pages – compared to what you could be achieving in a year’s time.

Think about it.... Til next time.