Rory Sutherland's Ted Talk Perspective Is Everything?

Perspective is important. Perspective can be equated to perception, and our perception is how we see or understand things. These things hold great power over how we see our lives. In Rory Sutherland’s Ted Talk “Perspective is everything” he talks about how powerful perspective is and how changing your perspective can the enrich the livelihood of your life. His main ideal is that most people are happier when they feel they are in control of their life. There is power all around us, we hold power when we control the situation we are in, and we also hold the power with our perception or perspective. Rory Sutherland is a British advertising executive. His career has made it necessary for him to understand the psychology behind why people do or …show more content…
In the video Sutherland uses the example of how unemployed people and pensioners live the same lifestyle. Sutherland is British, and in Britain a pensioner is a person who collects pension an equivalent to our social security. This means that both the unemployed and the pensioners are out of work. This similar lifestyle still creates a divide in the happiness level between the pensioners and the unemployed. People that are unemployed tend to be less happy then pensioners, and this is because the pensioners have control over their life. They decided to retire. The unemployed people however didn’t have control over their …show more content…
I learned this power while on a service trip to South Africa with thirty classmates and six teachers from my school. This was definitely a life altering twelve days. Here I learned to look at life differently, and now I have power when dealing with hard times. I found myself surrounded by people who had next to nothing. Families of five filled a metal eight by eight box while I previously complained about my bedroom being small. Children walked around barefoot while I was just complaining that I didn’t have enough shoes. The people of South Africa were truly happy, even with what little they had. Their smiles inspired me. Their smiles inspired me to change my perspective of the world around me. I now understand what it means to be happy with what you have rather than complaining about the things you don’t have. I also now understand how to better deal with situations that could get a negative reaction out of