Time To Check Your Filters?
I rely on Google Calendar for a lot of things. It's on my computer, my phone, and my iPad, and it helps me keep up with both personal and business meetings and commitments. I also use it to set one-time and recurring reminders.
I even use it to keep up with the Atlanta Braves schedule.
Just a few days ago, a reminder popped up on Google Calendar informing me it was time to change the air filters in my home. I have this reminder set to check my air filters every 4 months.
With all the pollen around Atlanta these days, I definitely needed to replace each of the filters. But sometimes I check them, and they look practically brand new and I'll leave them alone for another 4 months.
This got me thinking about other "filters" in my life and the lives of the people I know and work with.
I believe that we each have different filters that we use to interact with each other and the world around us. Some of these begin to establish themselves during our childhood, while others may develop or evolve during our teen or adult years.
So what do I mean by filters?
Well rather than try to explain it with words, I'd rather show you. Watch this video. It's 3 minutes long and well worth your time.
Did you watch the video? What did you think?
I thought it was a powerful message. And while it was designed as a marketing campaign for Dove, I think the video and the idea of how we "see" ourselves is a great example of the types of filters we all have in our lives.
Other filters might include:
- How we see others
- How we think about money
- How we relate to family and friends
- Why we stay in jobs we don't like
- Why we're afraid to try new things
- and so on . . .
I'm using the term "filter" while some might call these behavioral scripts. Whatever we call them, these filters are a big part of what makes each of us who we are.
They impact the words we use, the people we associate with and the decisions we make. For better or worse.
And I believe that just like the air filters in my home, we need to regularly check our filters to see if they need to be replaced. Or removed completely.
One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of my work helping women is getting them to discard their filters, even if temporarily, and consider what's possible in their lives. I ask them to dream. I want to explore what their aspirations are.
It's very rare that my clients can achieve all their ideal goals when we first create their Wealthcare plan, but there's nothing I enjoy more than telling a client in a planning review that we're in a situation to move one or more of their goals closer to their ideal. And I couldn't do this without first exploring what "ideal" looks like for each and every one of my clients.
Whether you use a tool like Google Calendar or not, I think we could all benefit from checking, changing or removing our filters from time to time.
