To radically shift your outlook, break out of your regular routine. Go a different way to work, try a new food, take a class from a yoga teacher you’ve never studied with before. Then notice how one seemingly simple change affects the way everything else appears to you. “Our whole world is basically what we perceive,” says Frank Jude Boccio, a meditation teacher and the author of Mindfulness Yoga. “The opening verse of the Dharmapada—an anthology of quotes attributed to the Buddha—says, ‘We create the world with our thoughts and our perceptions.’ This means that the only thing we know about this world we are living in is how we perceive it.”

To show how changeable our perceptions are, Boccio directs his students to visit a store and try on a hat that they would describe as “not me,” then notice how wearing it changes the way they feel. “Even without looking in the mirror, just having the hat on changes your perception of your reality in that moment,” Boccio says. Changing your perspective, whether it’s as dramatic as taking a trip to another country or as mundane as taking a different seat at your dining table, can make you more aware of how conditioned your perceptions are. This awareness can soften your attachment to your perceptions, says Boccio, and open your heart to change. “Seeing the conditioning of perceptions is an essential aspect of the yogic path of liberation,” he says.

adapted from Yoga Journal by By Charity Ferreira

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