I have a friend who is an accomplished artist and we would play mind games as we walked around the streets of Manhattan. One game we played is that one of us would fix on some unusual perspective, like the perspective of an ant on a coin that is on the sidewalk or the perspective of a bird in flight, just going by the buses or through an alleyway between buildings, or the perspective of a homeless woman sitting on the curb next to her shopping cart that contained all her belongings. And what we would do is we would explain what we were seeing from that point of view to the other person, and based on the description, the other person would have to guess the perspective the describer was generating.
My friend used some of the perspectives for inspiration for his paintings. One of his paintings displayed a vision of the world from the perspective of a goldfish. It really opened my eyes up to the various ways of looking at the world. It is a good exercise to sharpen your awareness of the many different ways you can perceive things. Always remember that genius is often finding a perspective that no one else has taken.
(Visit Michael at www.creativethinking.net)
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