When someone speaks to me it really doesn’t matter what they say, it is my own voice I hear. Whatever preconceived notions I have about any topic will filter what I hear, and this is what leads to communication challenges for us all. This tendency to hear anything through our own filters is present in each and every one of us.
This applies not only to words, but music, it applies to smells, it applies to colors and clothing, to cars and cities, it applies to everything we encounter. These filters are comprised of every experience we have ever had; if our experience around a song was a pleasant experience we are apt to like the music, if the experience was unpleasant, the music stinks. If we had a bad experience with a brand of car, our filters kick-in suggesting that brand is faulty. We might even feel a dislike for an entire city if someone we know in an unfavorable light hails from that city. At any given moment what we believe, correctly or incorrectly, is impacting every experience we have. It is your voice you are hearing, not necessarily what is being said.
This is exactly why it is important to become the Involved Observer in our own lives; so that we might be less reactive and more proactive. Living from a default setting which has not been updated is so very limiting we cannot enjoy so much life has to offer.
Of course you might have guessed that my book It’s All About Me addresses this very concept, and you would be entirely correct. Living life fully and joy-fully is an end product of living life aware of why we are making the choices we make and recognizing that we are always at choice.
