Understanding our Filters

Swati
Building Yourself
Published in
6 min readOct 11, 2017

We started with the why: the critical importance of building self-awareness to unlock the life we want to lead.

Understanding your filters is the first step in starting to build this self-awareness.

We’re living in a world of filters — read: snapchat cat ears, gingham and lark, even just the way we write on social media, making our posts display our grandest moments, funniest retort, or the latest foodie find.

I’m sure there’s plenty that can be said about the effects of this in our lives, but that’s not what I’ll talk about here. We’re not just filtering ourselves to others. In different ways, and without necessarily realizing it, we also filter our lives to ourselves.

The way we perceive the world around us, the stereotypes we think we know and evaluate others by, the thoughts we think when something happens in our lives… these are all filters that we process life through.

To truly start living a life of our choosing, we need to get to know our filters. Only once we get to know them, can we then choose the ones that best create the life we want to live.

This is the first step in living a life of self-awareness — understanding how we perceive and process information.

So what do I mean by these filters?

  • Any deep-set belief you’ve never questioned or chosen for yourself — think religion, gender roles, social constructs

Here’s what happens when I search fireman on google:

Here’s what happens when I search firewoman…

That’s a pretty deep-seated filter we default to until we make ourselves realize that that’s all it is. A filter. A girl who wants to be a firefighter may blaze ahead and achieve what she wants to achieve or she might feel limited by this pattern and take herself out of the game. Which path she takes will depend on her personality (largely affected by her filters)… If she was aware of her filters, she could very deliberately choose the path forward and choose to discard this filter. This is the kind of choice for your life that awareness enables.

  • Self-limiting dialogues you or someone else has always told you — ex: I’m non-confrontational or you’re an I instead of an E (Myers-Briggs)

I recently started volunteering at a high school mentorship organization. While the organization is well-meaning, one of the sessions we did with the kids is to try to understand our behaviors and interests using the Myers-Briggs assessment. After taking the test, the mentees were split into Introverts vs. Extroverts or Thinking vs. Feeling to carry out different exercises. Each of these exercises were then summarized with statements like, “See, Katy was an extrovert and you saw that in how she led that discussion.”

Same thing happened at work. We had a team bonding discussion and the facilitator called out that we need to make space for the introverts. “They” may not say their ideas out loud in this forum, but we will ask for them afterwards to allow for equal space. I’m sure this is helpful, but it’s also a filter with which the introvert may start to model their own behavior.

There’s no science that says an introvert cannot share an idea during a discussion. Sure they may be more used to sharing privately or prefer to mull things over for longer before presenting a more-formed POV. None of that is a hard and fast rule. Also, what’s to say they aren’t doing that BECAUSE they’ve always been told how introverts act?

All that continuing to rely on this classification achieves is it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that can have unintended consequences. In this particular example, it’s nice that the team is making space to gather ideas in different ways. That’s not always the case. Sometimes, if you want to contribute your voice to something, you have to do it while and where the decision is being made. Even if you’re an “introvert.”

Sometimes, you have to stand up for yourself or someone else to get something you need. Even if you call yourself “non-confrontational.”

  • Glass half empty or glass half full?

This is yet another filter. We’ve all met people full of unbridled optimism all the way to people who are negative about everything that happens around them. This is reflective of their own filters. If something good happens to you and all you’re doing is waiting for the other shoe to drop, become aware that this is your filter and that it can be chosen or discarded. Is it helping you create the kind of life you want to live? If so, great! You’ve thought about it and deliberately chosen it. If not, understand it so you can change it.

  • Jealousy

This is the last example I’ll give here, but one of my biggest pet peeves. There are so many relationships that rise and fall based on the concept of jealousy.

There’s one requirement (on this topic) that I think a desirable relationship should satisfy (this is my filter) — trust. You may very well have a different filter/list of requirements and that is totally okay, if you choose it consciously.

If you have a relationship of trust and feel that you can trust your partner to be faithful and put your relationship before other temptations, explorations, etc…, there is literally no need to be jealous.

If you are still jealous and can’t help that, this is an excellent example of a filter you should question, explore, and then choose what filter and what life you want to create for yourself.

Maybe you find it hard to trust someone like this → can you talk yourself through why? Do you feel like you may be tempted to act and thus think others can be too? Has your partner given you explicit signs that you shouldn’t/can’t trust them? If so, should you be with this person? Or at the very least, should you have an open conversation expressing your concerns and see if they are willing and able to have the same conversation with you productively?

Lastly, the notion that “if your partner doesn’t feel jealous of other people in your life, then they don’t love you enough” is totally and utterly false. If you or your partner express love through jealousy, I candidly do believe you are setting yourself up for a very uncomfortable and tenuous relationship, one which you will always have to question. Again, if this is a filter you are comfortable having, that’s totally your choice to make. My main point here is that this is yet another filter, conscious or unconsciously defining your life.

We’ve all heard the concept if you want to improve something, measure it. Filters are the same way. They create the life we live by processing every input we encounter into the thought we then perceive.

By understanding what filters we have, we take the first step in taking stock of the life we have and creating space for the life that we want to create.

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Original post here.

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