There’s one thing that is so painfully simple about life. It’s so simple we generally ignore it, or just take it for granted. It is this…when we give something our attention, we change it. That change is called the “observer effect.”

The Observer Creates Change

You can approach the “observer effect” in a variety of ways. You can apply how humans make meaning of life through their sensory experiences and relate them to past experiences in order to generate meaning. Or you can apply the weird nature of quantum reality and consider how the human brain may collapse the quantum wave function based on their expectations in order to create reality. Whatever way you want to understand the observer effect is fine.

A Note For Those Who Think This Is Bananas

For those of you who are going to relate what I’m saying to physical matter, here’s something more I’d like for you to consider. Physical matter can be manipulated and changed. It just takes more effort. You can melt things down, cut things apart, shatter them into pieces…all of this is change.

What I’m talking about is changing what the things we observe represent to us. To do this, we must first observe our thoughts and understand how we think. This is so we can change the thoughts that lead to the emotions we have about something. You see, things don’t actually matter. It’s how things make us feel that we’re all after.

Accepting Change

Change has been given such a negative connotation. This is likely because of the human desire for predictability. But in the end, we’re always experiencing change. In many ways we’re not preventing change, just telling ourselves that our actions are slowing it down. (I don’t know about you, but the slowest thing I’ve ever experienced is suffering. So yeah, I’m all about changing things and speeding things up, if it means experiencing more/faster joy and happiness.)

Change is not bad. Actually, change is quite amazing, if you approach it correctly. You can effect positive change, you just have to accept that you are the cause of all change. It is how you think and feel about the things you perceive that dictates their meaning and value. If you can come to accept that there are other meanings than what you initially thought, you can create something infinitely more.

For The Better

Realizing that we are altering everything we observe with our thoughts and emotions is the first step to being able to change things to be more in line with what we want. Realize that what you think and feel isn’t all there is. There are other perspectives. You just have to teach yourself to see them, consider them, relate to them, etc.

There’s one more detail that you need to remember. The things you experience aren’t actually what you’re after. You’re after the feelings they give you. If you want to have a different experience, it’s most likely that you want to experience a different emotion. So work to find the thoughts surrounding the circumstance that provide you with the emotion you most desire. You will see the way you observe situations change…for the better.