What lens do you view the world through?

Our view of the world around us is directly influenced by our past experiences, beliefs, values, biases, preferences, and general outlook on life.

Where one sees an opportunity, another may see a problem.

Where one sees growth, another may see potential failure.

Where one sees a good thing, another may see bad.

It all comes back to which lens you choose to see the world through, and the way in which you react or respond, and yes you read that right, we get to choose.

It was July 14th 2021, a hot summers' day, clear blue skies. I was driving back home along the M40 motorway, hitting 70MPH, in my midnight blue BMW, with the roof down, and singing along to Heart FM 80’s hits! 

I pulled off the motorway at the Oxford services to grab a drink and snack, and to dial into a zoom call.

As I hopped back into my car to continue my journey home, the amber engine light came on. I quickly checked the manual, and it advised to get checked ASAP. I figured I would head home and call the AA. However, as I pushed down on the accelerator, I could feel the lack of pull from the engine, as if it barely had any power. I stopped and turned the ignition off, waited a few minutes, and turned it on again. As I pressed the accelerator, the car would not pick up power and was struggling to move forward.

At this point, I realised it would be a bad idea to continue onto the motorway and try to get home, so I pulled over into the petrol station which was on the slip road back out onto the motorway.

I phoned the AA, and they said a driver would be with me in…wait for it…3 minutes. I said that must be a mistake, I am at a motorway services. In fact, the AA driver had just headed into the services to drop off another vehicle and had picked up my job!

Result!🥳

The friendly AA man checked over the car, identified the engine issue, and advised that it would need to be towed to a garage for repair, and it was not safe to drive.

It was a lovely sunny day, and although I was due to attend an online meeting later that evening, I sent my apologies and waited. Apparently whilst I had AA membership for what I thought was every service the AA had to offer; I didn’t have cover for a taxi. So, I had to wait for the tow truck which would drop me home, as well as dropping the car off at a local garage.

The AA man advised that I would most likely need to start thinking about getting a new car, and we talked cars for a couple hours! I learnt lots about him, various cars, and we debated various makes and models. He was simply keeping me company; he could have easily left me and headed home as it was his final job of the day!

Result!🥳

Two hours passed, and he called in again, to obtain an ETA on the tow truck. The lady on the other end then kindly offered to send a taxi to take me home, and they would cover it! (Even though this wasn’t included in my membership!)

Result!🥳

My car was towed to an AA approved local garage in Greater London that evening, and not my home as it wasn’t safe to drive. The next day, I called them to be told they could not fix the problem, and I would need to arrange for it to be towed elsewhere and incur the tow truck cost too! I disputed this as I hadn’t chosen the approved garage, they had, and without any disagreement they immediately waived the tow truck fee!

Result!🥳

I phoned 5 local garages who all advised they couldn’t take the car for a few weeks due to backlog! So, I requested the AA tow it to Wokingham, simply because this was a BMW specialist that I had used for years, they knew the car, and I trusted them to be honest with me regarding the options for my car (having had many bad experiences with other garages in the early years!) The AA kindly agreed to take it to Wokingham, approximately 40 miles away, at their own cost.🤷🏽♀️

Result!🥳

The kind AA driver kept me updated on the pick-up and drop-off of my car. The garage had initially said it would take 3-4 days before they could even look at my car, as they were busy. However, they managed to inspect my car the very next day to diagnose the problem!

Again: Result!🥳

The garage advised me that it was indeed time to change my car, and whilst repairing it, this was only a short-term measure, and I would need to replace it promptly. (Yes, I was devastated as it was my baby!) and I am now awaiting delivery of my new car. I have been almost five months without a car, due to the global shortage of semi-conductors!

The upside?

I have deferred the start of my car payments, (always a positive for cashflow!), increased my daily steps through walking much more, had Uber and Bolt on speed dial (generating work for the drivers), and become so much more disciplined with my planning, timekeeping, and even learning to pack lighter (shock horror!!), when I am travelling using the mainline trains to get around.

Whilst I was devastated at the loss of my car, the overall experience during the breakdown and repair was amazing, everyone I interacted with throughout was helpful, friendly and went over and above, including the outstanding salesman who is handling the sale of my new car! In fact, as I was car-less, he went out of his way to identify a car that met my exact specification that was already in build stage – otherwise I could be waiting well into next year, given the global semi-conductor shortage and the adverse impact on car production!

Go back 10 years, pre - my personal growth journey, and heightened levels of awareness, I am certain that this entire situation would have created a very different experience for me.

Instead, I may have reacted badly, gotten angry, frustrated, and extremely stressed about the entire situation, blaming others, which would most likely have led to me taking it out on those around me, disagreements and arguments with all parties involved, their responses and interactions with me therefore being very different, creating an altogether unpleasant experience.

Consider the filters I did apply versus the ones I could have, in this situation:

Having a positive outlook and asking myself, ‘What is the best I can make of this situation?’, ‘What can I learn from it?’, ‘How can I turn it around?’, ‘What is the good in this?’ ‘Being curious, I get to learn about the AA man, his job and also brainstorm pros and cons of different cars’

As opposed to -

‘Why does this always happen to me?’, ‘Garages are trying to fleece me’, ‘The AA are rubbish’, ‘BMW’s are crap’, ‘The AA man is just a mechanic, why should I talk to him’

Ultimately, I was completely blown away by the entire episode and how it had unfolded so effortlessly, and I experienced no feelings of stress.

Moral of the story: We create our reality through our lens of the world…

So how is our view of the world derived?

We are all receiving a deluge of information at any given moment. A study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, according to the British “Times of London” and “Telegraph”, believes that people are subjected to an equivalent amount of 34GB of information daily! Given this study was carried out a few years ago, this number is certainly much bigger today!

The source of this information includes mobile phones, the internet, email, TV and Radio, newspapers and books, social media.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), the model of Communication developed by Bandler and Grinder, explains how we receive information that comes from the outside world, how we process it, and how it influences the way we communicate and respond to others.

We filter this information, in order to make sense of this world, and we do so using Primary Filters. As such, we –

➡️ Delete

➡️ Distort

➡️ Generalise

the information which we receive.

Deletion is where we selectively pay attention to certain information or experiences over another. For example, we may have a heightened awareness of the cricket scores yet delete the football results simply because we have a passion for cricket and zero interest in football.

Distortion is where we interpret information or an experience in line with our own beliefs, values and past experiences. For example, we have experienced a ‘bad’ relationship early on in our lives, perhaps someone whom we dated, or we witnessed constant arguing between our parents as we were growing up, and we come away believing that all relationships are doomed to fail, or all men or women are ********!

Generalisation is where we may take something quite specific and apply it more broadly. For example, we may fail an exam, or an interview, and generalise that we fail at everything. Or have a particularly bad experience at a company and generalise that all companies are the same.

So, what does this mean?

It means we create an internal representation of the world based on how we process information and experiences.

And why is this important?

It is important because our internal representation is our subjective reality, which may often not be the same as the objective reality.

For example, imagine, Person A’s past experiences may lead them to believe that you cannot trust anyone, everyone is out to get you, and that the only way to succeed is to abuse, bully and manipulate your way to the top.

Whereas, Person B may have experienced a trusting, fair and supportive environment that enables success through hard work, skills and abilities, dedication, and commitment.

We (me and you) could be sat together in a café enjoying a coffee and chat, an argument breaks out at the next table, and we both witness and interpret the exact same situation very differently, simply based on our view of the world.

And this reality, our view of the world, directly influences the way that we show up, behave, respond, and communicate.

So, in the example of Person A and Person B, isn’t it likely that they will both have vastly different experiences and outcomes in the workplace, simply based on their filters and internal representations, which influence the way they show up?

In other words, our chosen view of the world, creates our reality, and in turn our experiences.

Which means that, we can both influence and change our filters and in turn our day-to-day experiences.

I invite you to become more aware of the lens you are applying to the world around you.

In other words, tune into your filters, recognise how they are influenced by so many sources including the news, media, internet, parents, relatives, friends, beliefs, past experiences, then ask yourself, ‘how can I view this differently, to create a better experience?’ as this will determine how you react or respond in any given situation.

And if there are areas of your life in which you are feeling dissatisfied, frustrated or unhappy, give some thought to how you can adjust your lens, to create a better outcome for yourself.

Because after all, unlike situations and people, you can only control what you can – YOU.