What Are You Missing Because You Filter?
By Jay Timms : In the last segment of this series, we talked about the power of the unconscious and how the majority of what happens in our minds happens behind closed doors. Folklore says that we only use 10% of our brain capacity, and when you look at the research that suggests that your unconscious accounts for 90% of your brain activity…I am no math major, but that makes sense to me. Our unconscious has a very busy life. One of it’s functions is to help us deal with the massive bombardment of information that we receive every day. When I say “bombardment”, let me quantify that for you. As we go throughout our day, we are hit with anywhere between 2-4 million bits of information through our 5 senses; visual, auditory, kinesthetic (feeling and touch), olfactory (smell), and gustation (taste). You may think that that is a lot, but what if I told you that 2-4 million bits of information comes at you not every day, every hour, or every minute? You are hit with 2-4 million bits of information every SECOND (BPS)! Pretty incredible, isn’t it? Now, what would happen if those 2-4 million BPS all got through to our mind to process? Research suggests that it would literally drive us crazy. You have heard of “stimulation overload”? That is what happens the first time people walk down the Las Vegas strip. I have actually seen people stop walking, jaw drooping, with their eyes wide open just staring. It is what happens when you take a child to their first 3D IMAX movie. Overload. Crying, burying their heads, get me out of here quick before I explode.
Our unconscious knows this. That is why our unconscious actually creates filters to reduce the amount of information that gets into our brain to process. How many of these bits of information do you think our unconscious allows our brain to process? I asked this one time in a seminar and a woman said, “If it is a man, they can process one piece of information at a time”. Not quite, but close. Your brain can actually only process 136 BPS of information of the 2-4 million that you are experiencing. That means that you are only able to process about 0.000009% of the information that you are receiving at any one moment. Your unconscious filters through the information and only lets in information that you have programmed it to see as important and vital information. Think about it. If you are only able to process 0.000009%, it better be pretty.
Important.
Don’t believe me? Let me give you an example. It is like that sensation that you have in your left big toe. BING! All of a sudden, you feel your left big toe. What happened? Did you just sprout a new toe? Of course not. It has always been there. It is one of the 2-4 million BPS that your unconscious says, “Ehh…not important.”
Here is an interesting fact as well. People with Autism actually have problems with their filters and allow too much information into their brains. Although that is a discussion for another time, it is something to think about as you look at the impact of too much information on the brain. So how does our unconscious alter the things that we have programmed it to recognize as unimportant? There are 3 different filters that we have. They are deletion, distortion, and generalization.
Deletion
A couple of weeks ago, I was getting myself ready in the morning and noticed that the bed had not been made. I started to move the covers when all of a sudden there was movement out of the corner of my eyes. It scared me to death and I actually cried out in surprise. When I looked at what was moving, I saw that it was my dog who had been laying on the bed. Let me clarify…my dog was on the bed that I was making and I didn’t even see him there. I have a queen size bed. It isn’t some gargantuan bed. My dog is no Teacup Chihuahua either. My unconscious said, “this information is not important”, and like the delete button on my keyboard that I am typing on right now, it simply made it vanish.
Distortion
I have heard people (and am guilty of myself at times) take something that is neutral in nature and distort it to make it appear bigger or smaller than it actually is. One example is people who try to do what I call “mind reading”. If someone they are looking at suddenly gives them a look or maybe doesn’t pay enough attention to them, suddenly they think that that means that the other person doesn’t like them. Or, when my teenage son comes home from a test at school and says, “I did pretty good. I think I only missed a couple of the questions” and is surprised when he only gets 60% on the test.
Generalization
Our brain works very hard at trying to keep up to all the information that is surrounding us. When information is either missing or missed, our brain makes up the difference by creating something in the middle to “fill in the blanks”. It is easier to digest information that is chunked together than trying to sift through everything. That is why when you look at the old film strips, if you look at it frame by frame, you will notice that there are gaps in the movement of the objects. However, when you watch the film at regular speed, you brain fills in the gaps and makes the movement appear seamless. When you generalize, your mind fills in the gaps to make what you think is a logical sequence…even when the information is totally made up.
Coming in the rest of the series:
1. How to recognize what others are filtering and how to use that information to your
advantage
2. How to ask better questions to get better answers
3. How to recognize the needs of others to deepen connections
4. How to use our filters to help us achieve more
