Building Perspective
I’ve had some amazing jobs, I’ve had some less than ideal jobs, and then I’ve had jobs that just felt stagnant. During one of those less than ideal jobs, I started thinking about what I enjoyed most about being a social worker. It really came down to my desire to see life and people as multi-faceted, my ability to help others move in a direction that is more productive for their lives, my knack for solving complex problems, and my love for educating and public speaking.
I take on a lot of things. I was working over 40 hours a week at my full-time job, teaching on the weekends, serving as a board member, and being a sounding board to friends, coworkers, and it felt like even dates at that point. So even though I had this idea in my head, I was incredibly busy, and my mental health was struggling. In 2021, I started thinking about all of the words that meant a lot to me over the years, or that had been present in my practice. Words like cognitive, mindful, acceptance, therapy, emotion, perspective, counseling, and a host of other words. When I started trying to combine them, it dawned on me that mindfulness and perspective had become so important to me over the years. And when we’re learning on perspective to inform our decisions, the best way to do that is mindfully (by combining our rational thoughts with our emotions to make the most balanced decision possible). I could think of no better combination than mindful and perspective.
Once I had Mindful Perspective™ figured out, I worked on what it would entail. I revisited what I enjoyed most at this point in my life, after being a social worker for well over a decade. It came down to individual perspective building (supportive, solution-focused, and brief interventions), consulting (strategic planning, work culture, leadership development, and so on), and offering professional speaking engagements in a number of settings.
It took time to move beyond that. I eventually worked to establish the LLC, continued to discuss it with friends, worked with a lawyer to trademark Mindful Perspective™, and then started booking speaking engagements under my LLC, instead of as an individual who was being asked. By the way, starting a business is expensive. The great thing about doing all of this is that it sparked my creative side. I’ve been all about creative solutions professionally, but I used to be artistic, and that was a creativity I wanted to revisit.
Here’s what I know after designing my own logo…Rorschach made several points. As I started to show my friends logos that I was creating in Canva, they were all seeing something different. None of them felt like me, so then I turned to creating a fox that was looking up with the words Mindful Perspective™ forming a circle around it. As I continued to progress with the business that didn’t feel right either. So then I started playing around with fonts and images in Canva. What reminded me of perspective? An eye, but that felt too “big brother is watching”, mountains, but those felt too outdoors (and I am not an outdoorsy person), and even one of my favorite things on earth, the Northern Lights (Miss Aurora Borealis herself). Some of them were too whimsical, others struck me as profile pictures, and then some felt very corporate. I eventually landed on the font in my logo that you see at the top of this website. The eye with the world as its pupil fit the space nicely, but it didn’t feel right.
I returned to foxes. I’ve always had a connection with foxes, and as a middle child, I think I carry a lot of their personality. After using some fox images in Canva and also drawing umpteen foxes—because some friends thought they were too aggressive, some looked like a unicorn, some were too whimsical, some were cartoonish, some looked like they were running away from their problems, and so on—I finally found the right balance between a realistic silhouette with the slightest bit of whimsy (I’m biased on this, obviously).
Creating this website, even through Squarespace, which is supposed to be super intuitive, also came with as many decisions. It’s finally here, though. I made it to the other side. I have two presentations coming up at the Spring Institute, which is a conference where hundreds of other professionals will be. One is going to be about LGBTQIA+ History, Diversity, and Inclusion (which will be presented to a smaller crowd), and the other will be on the Ethics of Competence (which will be presented to hundreds of professionals).
I’m hopeful these presentations will generate some interest in the business, but I guess I can’t really know until it does or doesn’t. That’s the thing about perspective, you have to live the experience before you can draw wisdom from it. Whatever happens next, I know that I’ll be able to add a new vantage point to my chapter in this book we call life.
For now, I want to sincerely thank you for visiting this site and considering how I might be able to assist you or your organization.