Perceptions

How does one consciously alter perspectives?

There's no easy way to explain it, but it can be done by changing representations.
Representations surround you. Everything you see is a representation of something else.
So, you could say that by doing something different with a representation you are changing the relationship and, thus, the resultant perspective.

For example, let's say you were living in poor conditions and wanted to move into a nicer place.
Take a look at the representations around you. What things do you perceive (through all of your 5 senses + your thoughts) that make you feel as though the conditions were not suitable?
It could be that you live in a poor neighbourhood with lots of boarded-up homes. Your house is somewhat dilapidated and there is little hot water. But for now let's focus on your immediate environment, like your bedroom or where you spend most of your time in the house.
It could be that you have a broken handle on your bedroom door, an unsightly hole in the wall in the hallway, and old stairs. There are many more conditions about your house, of course, but let's keep ourselves to these three.

Each of these three would represent the conditions you find yourself in. (They form a sort of consciousness.) Your experience is not so much "because" you lost your job several years ago and have a family to support, but is more because you have allowed the representations to interact more and more over time and do so within your environment. It is more about the relationships you have in the now (and here) than in the past (or there). Maybe you remember the handle wasn't always broken. But when it broke you didn't care to fix it. This broken handle then began to interact with the other representations in the house making the complete picture seem more undesirable. (The broken handle slowly breaks its surroundings, so to speak.)

You would begin to change your perspective by making the representations appropriate to the an other state (say, a better living environment). Changing the representations (fixing the handle, taking care of the hole and the stairs) may not seem like the way to get you out of the house, but it is.

[Here's where English gets a bit tricky.. bear with me in the illustration]

When the relationships change you experience this change over time. You transition from one state to another much the same way you don't just appear in a dream but you transition by preparing for bed, putting on certain clothes or laying in a certain place, etc. It is possible to realize you are dreaming now (and we sometimes do, momentarily) but it is not something in our cognitive framework. You don't just go from one state to another. It's shocking. You need a logical transition.
So, even though a relationship may change more or less instantly it may take some time for you to perceive of the change in your physically-oriented environment.
(For many people here, this relationship transition period is about 2-3 months I think.)

It is not necessary to change your thoughts so much. Many of your thoughts have 'externalizations' that you can see. Changing a thought could be as easy as doing something physical. In the big scheme of things, there is little difference. (Do realize, however, that what is most relative to you is closest to you and your experience. Your body is most relative as are your thoughts. It is your close experience. But changing something else may trigger a new kind of relationship which may allow you, eventually, to perceive the kind of things you want.)

Sometimes we make the mistake of resisting the things around us. This usually doesn't work because you can't just "push a cup away". The cup is more than what you see. The cup could very much be tied to other things that you see or don't see.

A ready example would be Susan trying to leave a man that she knows isn't good for her. It is not as easy as physically leaving until she has changed more of the other relationships that she can't see, as well.