Worldview

My backyard world, lit up and alive.

Do You Know What Your Worldview Is?

It is your baseline understanding of how everything in the Universe works. It's the bedrock of all your understanding.

I became aware of worldview when my father died. I was almost 11 years old. It had never occurred to me that one of my parents could die. I suppose that I comprehended death on some level by that age, but I was shocked to see him go.

It was a cataclysmic earthquake. The bedrock of my understanding of life shifted beneath my feet. It was a shift in worldview.

Worldviews for Larger Perspectives

My example is a personal one, but cultures have worldviews too.

A large-scale worldview shift came when the USA was attacked on 9-11-2001. After the Twin Towers came down, the world was never the same. Many worldviews changed that day, both individually and in a larger cultural sense.

A Worldview is a fundamental belief system that shows up as attitudes, stances, approaches, philosophies, and ultimately, thoughts.

The World is Full of Worldviews

Religions, fields of science, philosophies, and really, any field of thought will have their own worldview.

The more aware we become of our worldviews (personally and culturally), the better we can understand our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

If you ask yourself worldview questions, you will be delving into spiritual, metaphysical, and philosophical realms.

Action Items for Worldview

• Can you define your worldview?
• When in your life timeline did you make worldview shifts?
• How did you handle those shifts? Is your life now better or worse (or a mix of both)?

Keep in mind that we can only know our worldview in part, though we act and relate emotionally from it all the time.

Any work on worldview is good work. When we can see ourselves thinking (metacognition), we can step outside of ourselves and start to question assumptions that might be holding us back.