Why do different people see the same situation differently? You are on a street corner with several others waiting for the light to change to cross the street. The light changes and BAM there’s a car accident right in front of you. When the police take statements everyone saw something different. Why is that?
Every second of every day our 5 senses are bombarded with data. There are literally millions of bits of sensory data all around us every second. But how much of that do we actually process into thoughts and memories? Less than a few hundred bit per second. So what is happening to all the rest of the data? It’s being filtered out – it’s being deleted, distorted and generalized.
Our filters are made up of several things (each of which will be discussed in future articles):
- Time, space, matter, and energy
- Language – these are the labels you put on IRs in your head
- Memories [from the past]
- Decisions [from the past]
- Meta-Programs (content free filters)
- Values and Beliefs
- Attitudes – the most conscious of the filters
After we filter the data down to a manageable amount we then chunk that data into Internal Representations (IR) – that’s a fancy word for memories or thoughts. We make 7±2 IRs per second. Your IRs are made up of the 5 senses and self-talk (your internal dialog). These IRs are intimately coupled to an emotional state from extreme negative to neutral to extreme positive. And the State is intimately coupled to your physiology. And this whole package if IRs-State-Psychology is what produces your behavior.
What this all means is each person has their own unique set of filters which determines how they see the world – more precisely how they experience the world and react to it. This is why no 2 people see the same event the same way.