Even though we live on this planet called Earth, our individual reality is different to most other people. What I mean by that is that we filter the world through our beliefs and attitudes, as if we each have a different glasses prescription for seeing the world.

A simple example is many people like to play/watch a sport, e.g. golf, and many people would find it very boring to engage with that same sport. So everyone has a filter for a particular sport – their attitude towards it. Any news about that sport is filtered through that attitude of excitement or boredom!

This extends to how we see members of our family, friends, work colleagues and so on. If a certain person in your life annoys you, then that filter/lens of annoyance is on when you interact with them  –  just like a camera filter changes the photograph, so our view of someone changes how we interact with them. You may be surprised that other people speak very differently of that same person and even enjoy being with them – how can that be!? It’s because that same person is being viewed through a different lens by other people who know them.

Once you know that you’re filtering people, events and even the expectations you have of yourself, you can start to change them. Let’s say you always expect to fail or not do a good job whenever you try something new. That is a filter – “I’m not great at trying new things”. Take off that filter, try a new one, e.g. “I may not be great at the start but with practice I’ll get there”, so that the filter becomes, “I get good at things once I try them a few times”.

You can see filtering as a way of judging yourself, the people in your life and even the news. Do your filters diminish your life because they cause you to focus on the negative aspects of people and the affairs of the world? What would it be like to remove them or change them?

Can you change the filter/expectation of a certain person in your life or the way you approach things so that you have a better experience?

Maybe putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is you trying to see the world with their filters on. This frees us up to be more understanding of other peoples’ point of views.

We all have filters, but once we recognise we do, we can start to live life in a more deliberate, honest way by owning up to our viewpoints and trying out different lenses and seeing how the world looks then. If life isn’t looking that wonderful, try out different filters until it looks/feels better.

The world can become a better place once we start to understand the filters we and other people have 🙂