INSCRIPTION

THE DIFFERENCE ONE LIFE CAN MAKE

GALILEO GALILEI – HE USHERED IN THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND GAVE TO THE WORLD A HIGHER PERSPECTIVE

Once upon a time, a father gave his son a telescope on his tenth birthday. One day while using the telescope the boy complained, “Father, this is useless. I can see better without it. Everything is too small.”

Obviously, the boy was looking through the wrong end. He had the narrow outlook through the glass. He wasn’t getting the big picture of life at all. His father smiled and gently adjusted or turned the little telescope around. With the adjustment of the telescope, the boy’s outlook was widened.

The boy grew up and improved the primitive telescope and with it he discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and the mountains on our moon.

He also became the first person to discover that the sun revolved and that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. His name was Galileo Galilei.

 Our perspective in life is determined by our outlook and our outlook is determined by the lens through which we see the world.

Unfortunately, too many people journey through life “seeing” the world through the lens of past conditioning and their own world which is a narrow and small view.

Whenever we look at life from the wrong end, everything goes wrong and we become victims of a dwarfed life.

Galileo’s father knew that to enable his son to have a bigger outlook the telescope must be adjusted. Therefore, expanding your outlook demands an adjustment in your thinking.

An adjustment in thinking demands a shift from your “normal” into the bigger, wider, and limitless world of possibilities and new horizons.

Big picture thinking is an expansive and elevated way of thinking.

If you were to fly an airplane you will have a complete and wholesome view of the ground; however, if you are walking on the ground your view becomes narrow and your perspective distorted. Therefore, big picture thinking gives you a complete and wholesome perspective of life.

An expansive and elevated way of thinking is made possible by becoming a life-long learner in the domain of life. Being a life-long learner necessitates becoming teachable and it involves having an open mind rather than a closed mind.

Ask in-depth, quality and relevant questions. Being a good listener increases your learning experience and also makes you step out of your own world into the world of others thereby understanding them and their frame of thinking which breeds empathy, tolerance and solution-oriented perspective, which is an expanded outlook on life.

The Big Picture thinking or an expanded outlook demands a paradigm shift. As long as your perception is confined to the frame of thinking that is centered on your world then your thinking will be narrow.

It is vital to look beyond the frame of thinking that is centered on your world into the world of others and also the larger world of possibilities.

 Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and the mountains on our moon because he looked expansively beyond his own world of experience into the larger world of possibilities and an ever-increasing horizon.

When your outlook expands, your abilities stretch and also expand. Therefore, your mental outlook determines the level of your accomplishment and the quality of your life experience.

THE ACCUSATION…

Galileo Galilei was severely criticized and persecuted for his discoveries and assertions. His critics spread rumors that he was a heretic – He believed science had an important role in determining truth; an opinion that the Roman Catholic Church took as a direct challenge.

Galileo’s books were banned, and he was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. During the period of the house arrest he continued to write and to conduct research with pendulums. He died four years afterwards.

In response to those who accused him of heresy, Galileo said, “I do not think it necessary that the same God who gave us our sense, our speech, our intellect, would have us put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of these sciences. The Holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the Divine Word”.

The higher your perspective the more people with dwarfed perspective will resent you. People usually resent what they do not understand.

Rather than seeking to understand in order to gain a higher perspective they prefer to defend their outdated and limited position. Therefore, they remain bound in ignorance.

Your perspective determines the level you function from in the domain of life.

Your perspective determines the level of your accomplishments or the lack of it; it determines both the quality and level of thinking and impact or contribution you make in the domain of life.