Perspective
You don’t get it by thinking. You get it by living long enough to see differently.
There’s a moment when something shifts.
Not outside of you, but inside.
The same situation.
The same type of person.
The same kind of uncertainty.
But you don’t react the way you used to.
Not because you’ve figured it out, but because you’ve lived through enough to see it differently.
That’s perspective.
Not opinion. Not positioning.
Orientation over time.
NOW
This week, it showed up in three very different ways.
My son Spencer completed his second triathlon.
If you don’t know him, that might just sound like a proud dad moment. And it is.
But Spencer is on the autism spectrum.
So what looks like a race is something else entirely.
Preparation. Routine. Managing the unexpected. Swimming in open water, with no boundaries. Staying with it when the environment shifts.
Overcoming the fear of riding a bike in the streets with rolling hills and cars. Managing fuel intake when textures are a thing.
What I felt watching him wasn’t just pride.
It was recalibration.
Of what effort looks like. Of what persistence actually means.
Of what’s possible when someone commits in their own way.
Perspective doesn’t always arrive as insight.
Sometimes it arrives as admiration that changes your internal scale. The kind that makes you look in the mirror.
Later in the week, I re-engaged with a former client.
Someone I hadn’t worked with in years.
Her narrative of being a “Velvet Hammer” has been embraced and grown into her identity.
She is known for her kindness. Empathic nature. Yet, appreciated for her unmistakably direct and firm expectations.
What struck me wasn’t the moniker.
It was how rare that combination has become.
In a world that often swings between over-softening and over-correcting,
She holds both. She has come to respect the moniker, and her teams respect her for how she leads.
It lands, providing a sense of confidence.
Not because it’s balanced. Because it’s integrated. That’s perspective too.
Knowing you don’t have to choose between being human and being clear.
And then there’s the broader lens.
The one that only shows up with time. When you’ve seen enough cycles to recognize the pattern underneath the moment.
We’re living through a period that feels like acceleration. AI. Change. The rewiring of how things work.
For many, it feels like rupture.
For others, it feels familiar.
Not because it’s the same.
Because the shape of it is.
Uncertainty. Overcorrection. Rebuilding.
Perspective doesn’t remove the intensity.
It tempers the reaction.
Not everything that feels cataclysmic is unprecedented. It contributes to your Narrative Worth in ways that you hadn’t planned for.
NEW
Here’s what I’ve come to understand.
Perspective isn’t something you have.
It’s something that has been formed.
Through moments you didn’t choose.
Through people who changed how you see.
Through experiences that recalibrated your internal measure.
Most people don’t know what their perspective actually is.
They know what they think. They don’t know what shaped it.
That’s the gap.
NEXT
I see a world where perspective becomes something we examine.
Not just express.
Where we can point to the moments that formed us. The people who influenced us. The experiences that shifted our scale.
And say:
“That’s why I see it this way.”
Because in a time where everything is moving faster, your perspective is one of the few things that can keep you grounded.
If you’ve taken the time to understand it.
If you don’t know what your perspective is yet, that’s not a problem.
It just means you haven’t fully looked at what shaped it.
Start there.
If you know someone wrestling with how to tell their story at a pivot point, a new role, a career shift, or a stage they’re stepping onto, send them this issue.
I’m Tobin Trevarthen.
I’ve spent the first 30 years inside the companies doing the work, building my Narrative Equity from a horizontal lens. I spent the last 12 years working across companies and executives to find the story that holds — only to discover, somewhere along the way, that the deeper work was always about something else.
We are not linear, chronological beings. We are spatial. Cumulative. Mosaic.
Every encounter adds a tile. Every shift — in role, in identity, in what the world asks of you — changes the image. The meaning only becomes visible when you step far enough back to see the whole.
I call that holistic view a Living Mosaic. And the value it accumulates over time — through clarity, coherence, and conscious design — is what I call Narrative Worth™.
Today, I work with founders and executives at the moments when the old story no longer holds, and the new one hasn’t formed yet. That inflection point is where I live. My perspective represents a lived experience.
This includes neurodivergent executives whose minds were never meant to fit the standard frame — and whose most extraordinary tiles often go unseen for exactly that reason.
Helping them build the mosaic that finally holds all of who they are is some of the most important work I do.
ShiftStory™ is where we do that work together.
I would be honored to help you shift your story. Your Narrative Worth™ is the most valuable asset you will ever own.
Perhaps this is key to ending our polarization. Thanks Tobin!
“Perspective isn’t something you have.
It’s something that has been formed.
Through moments you didn’t choose.
Through people who changed how you see.
Through experiences that recalibrated your internal measure.”