If your life is stable, you generally see the same things in the same context day after day. The sight of your coffee maker on the counter. Of that pile in the corner of your bedroom. Your walls.

When you first moved in, you noticed every detail–the scratches in the baseboards or the beauty of the tile floor. When you first bought that blouse, you paid attention to its stitching, to its certain hue. When you were young you were fascinated by the existence of your belly button and pinky toes, probably.

But as your brain began to recognize the familiar (and deemed it non-threatening), it went into energy conservation mode. It stopped noticing the details. What was once an intricate picture blurred into a hazier scene. Home. Family. Body.

When we stop perceiving nuance, we risk losing our sense of gratitude for what we have. Or we fail to recognize the shabby state of things. Or we can mistakenly believe that our lives are fixed. That our beliefs, appearances, who we surround ourselves with, and how our days are designed were cemented ages ago, and that it’s impossible to make a change.

But the picture is ever evolving. We’re never trapped. One of the greatest, albeit underutilized, tricks in the book is to harness the power of the reframe.

Adjust the tangible content of your life. A different mug for your morning coffee. Your shirts hung here instead of there.

Inject your life with new rituals, however small. An end of day deep breath. A promise to greet your family members when one of you enters the room, every time, even if it’s just for momentary eye contact.

Reframe the picture at large by seeing an entirely different one for a while. If travel isn’t viable, there’s always the call to redecorate. Rearrange the living room! Who’s going to stop you?

The key is to prompt your mind to stay present and attuned to the ordinary grandeur that is your life. To remind yourself that one of the greatest privileges of being alive is the opportunity to change your mind, to look at an old situation with a fresh perspective, and to allow yourself at every moment to inhabit more fully the truth of who you are now.

Start by asking, “What if?” And, “What’s another way to look at this?”