Knowing when to zoom in and out is important. There are things we should zoom in on and those we should zoom out from to see the biggest possible picture.
For example, we might zoom in on returns in the short term, to see if anything has changed or what’s going on (the economic cycle, for example), before zooming out to see what’s not changed – the plan or hoped for outcome.
A lot of effort is put into keeping up with what’s changing, but very little on what isn’t.
Dr Amy Johnson, in her excellent book “Just A Thought” explains it beautifully:
“When we press our noses to the television screen, we’re oblivious to everything around us, and we lose ourselves in that narrow reality.
When we hop in a spaceship and look down on life from outer space, reality expands exponentially.
Nothing has changed, but everything is different.
From up in our spaceship, we see that everything is in motion. We see that everything is always changing from outer space.
But down on earth in our tiny corner of the planet, with the tiny subset of people we know, seeing through the fifty tiny, biased bits of information that our me-centered brain shows us each second, we don’t see that life is always changing. Things look static and serious.
Down on earth, my world revolves around me, and yours revolves around you. We hear the narrator as if it speaks the truth.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are things we need to zoom in on, but only temporarily and only for detail / understanding. Decisions should not be taken here though.
We should always zoom out, see the bigger picture and decide from that perspective.
Zooming in helps with one piece of the 5,000-piece jigsaw, but it’s all 5,000 pieces together that matters most.
Suffering comes to us when we zoom in, relief when we zoom out.