Personal Perception Lenses
When you receive information in your brain through your senses, your brain categorizes and make sense of the information to determine what information is important and what is not important and what to do with that information. It is like the process of digestion where it goes through a series of steps to complete its journey. The information and stimulation from the outside world or from what is created from your conscious thought (your mind) goes through a unique processing path that is truly your own. You have created these pathways through your life experience, what you practiced, what you focused on, and how you were conditioned through the world around you.
The first piece of that digestive tract is what we put into the brain. You receive so many pieces of information all day long that your brain has stored patterns or filters for what it lets in and what it blocks out. For instance, it determined that seeing your nose is not important, so that’s why we don’t even see our noses that are right in front of us. It has been filtered out!
You Can Choose Using the Conscious Mind
The pathways and filters are not right/wrong or good/bad, they just are. Each person has a unique way of processing information. However, it may be worth taking a closer look at your thoughts, patterns, and what you focus on to determine if your thought patterns are serving you or not. Because we can use our conscious mind to reflect on our own thinking and determine what we want to think and what to focus on or how to evaluate situations, events, people, places, and things, this is much more in your control than you may have thought! Your mind can be changed.
Choosing a Focus
One way to change your experience and thoughts about anything around you or even yourself is to shift your Focus- what you look for. We can have an unconscious bias toward pinpointing certain elements of life that we are not even aware of! When we are able to make that decision consciously, we can change our whole perspective!
Let’s say for example, Client A decides to focus on what she is grateful for, what is positive in her life, what is working well, and figuring out ways to build stronger relationships. Her focus lenses, or personal perception lenses, are now creating a filter- it filters out what she doesn’t want to focus on, and lets in and even helps to FIND what she wants to focus on!
Client B, however, doesn’t use conscious thinking to change her focus. She has been conditioned over time to focus on negative things- what is not working, how people are not treating her right, how nothing goes her way, and how little chores her husband seems to do. Her brain will continue to focus on these things because that’s what it has always done. Brains do not like to change on their own. They require conscious thought and effort to re-program existing mindsets. You have to want to change it and know that you can change it!
These two individuals will have vastly different life experiences because of where they put their focus and thoughts. If you want to create a life of your dreams, you may need to take a peek at what you choose to focus on!
Your Lenses: Questions to Ask Yourself
When was the last time you cleaned off your personal perception lenses and really designed the pair you want to have on?
What do you want to focus on in your experiences, relationships, and world view?
How have your current lenses impacted your experiences and relationships?
If you are working on something challenging, such as a weight loss goal, work related goal, personal transformation goal, notice how you are experiencing this journey. Are you focusing on why it is not perfect or focusing on what you are learning and how you are growing?
Take some time to re-design your focus and filters!
Interested in getting coached? Send me a quick email and I will send you some information! There’s never a better time to level up!
