F.U.S.E. - FILTER

The F in my trademark concept fuse stands for filter. Now imagine the AC filter. You have the filter. The air flows through it, leaving the contamination on the filter, and then the clean air comes out and we breathe the clean, fresh air. Now, what happens when there is too much contamination in our filter? If there's construction in the house and the AC is full of dust and contamination, what is going to happen to the air flowing through the filter? It's going to come out cleaner and we're going to be able to breathe fresh air. Or is it going to come out dirty? Because it's going to catch on and grab all those things that are on the filter and then it's going to bring it with it, making us sick and allergic and all these things. Well, we all have a filter as individuals, and our filter from when we're little is getting all the contamination from our life experiences, our family of origin interactions, our temperament, our character, everything that we've interpreted in life goes through the filter, leaving all the contamination there. So at the beginning, the messages would come out clear because we would pay attention or take for what it was, whatever our parents told us. We would believe everything. When you're children, you believe everything, which is why kids are so resilient and they're little sponges. They absorb everything because their filters are pure, are clean. Now, what happens when you grow older and your filter is full of all these values, contamination experiences, traumas and things that you've gone through in your life? It's dirty. And what do we do when the dirty filter in the AC is nasty already? We change it or we clean it. Now, as individuals, we can't really change our filter, but we can clean it. And we have to intentionally go in and look at. Oh, I tend to interpret things as though people are not considering me or that I tend to take things personal because I was bullied when I was younger or people would rag on me or they wouldn't consider me, or I wasn't as good as my sister or my brother. There's all these things, inner filter, that are determining the way that you interpret life. In fact, there's this really cool quote that says that we don't see the world the way the world is, we see the world the way we are, and that's the filter, because the information goes through it and then it comes out with your own biases and all the contamination in your filter. Now, biologically speaking, research shows that the right TPJ in the brain, it's an area in the brain that plays a Role in how we observe and interpret information. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with perception, the way we think. And it has to also do with we thinking, us thinking about what other people are thinking, which happens in every relationship. You swear that your partner did that because this is what was going on in his mind or her mind. And then you realize when you have a conversation with that person, if you get to have a conversation, that no, it didn't even occur to that person to think that way. But we have a section in our brain in charge of thinking about what other people think. And that's, in layman terms, filter. It's how we process the information. And guess what? Research shows that when they look at the brains of different individuals, that section that the right TPJ is different in different adults and is different from when you're a child because it develops over time, which is why you interpret things in a different manner when you're a child, and then you come up with your own interpretations when you're an adult. It's because of the contamination in your filter. So it is really important to look back to understand how we tend to interpret information. Let me give you a few examples so that we can simplify this. If I have a client who is a doctor, she's a physician in a hospital in the emergency room, and her mom is a doctor in a private practice. And she grew up seeing her mom take her time with patients and just explain everything to them and be very loving and caring and show them how much she cared about them by just spending time with them. But as a result, her waiting room was always packed and people had to wait hours and hours and hours. Now, my client, who's a physician now in a hospital, does the same thing with her patients. And when she gets to the last patient, the patient is extremely upset because he or she has been waiting forever, feels that they're not considering them. And like this doctor, she's taken all day to get to me. She doesn't give a crap. And I'm here, like in so much pain. And, you know, so inhuman was her filter was telling her, I am taking my time with each patient and I'm giving them my everything. I'm all there is them. I'm very present with each and every one of my patients, which is why I took longer to get to the last one. So the way my client filtered information was taking longer is a way of showing love and respect and care to my patients. But the last patient, the way he or she filtered the Same behavior was like, this doctor doesn't give a crap. She doesn't care that I'm in so much pain. And I've been waiting for her all day long. Filter. We see the world the way we are, and if we want to see the world in a better way, we have to become a better version of ourselves by cleaning our filter. Now, I have to say that not everything in our filter is negative. So, for example, something negative could be that I. Let's say that actually I'm going to tell you about another client. I have this couple in which the woman grew up in a home that was very dysfunctional. Her parents pretty much abandoned her and left her with her grandmother. And the grandmother raised her, but the grandmother had some other issues of domestic violence with the grandpa. So she grew up seeing all these things where she was abused, where the women were abused in her family, where they didn't have any power. And they taught her that she had to find a man that would take care of her, that would provide for her. And they didn't tell her that she was worth it and that she was capable and that she had everything that it took to be successful and be a wonderful person, regardless of whether a man would do things for her or not. And this woman taught her husband, who came from a beautiful, healthy household. She taught him how to be undermining, how to be diminishing, how to put her down, how to abuse her. And she didn't realize this, but the thing is that the way she filtered information made her react to him in ways that. That it would draw him or it would make him counter react to her in an abusive manner. And the reason for that is that whenever she filtered any behavior of his, she would react in such a way that it would somehow mold him so that he would start reacting to her the way she was familiar with and the way she was used to understanding other people's behaviors and reactions. So. So we don't realize, but if we've had traumas in our lives or negative experiences, we tend to interpret life with that filter. And then it's way more than just interpreting it because, you know, maybe that doesn't harm anybody but you. But the thing is, we don't just interpret information. We use that information to behave, to feel a certain way. And we know through the cognitive theories that thoughts, emotions and actions are all related. So if we're thinking that something is a certain way based on the way we filtered it, then we're gonna start feeling accordingly and we're gonna start acting Accordingly. And that's the danger. That's why it's so important to understand your filter and clean it. Clean it. And the people that are in your surroundings, the people that you care about, your spouses, your family members, your co workers, your boss, like the people that really matter, you need to not only know your filter, but try to learn a little bit about those people's filters to make sure that you speak to them or you communicate and relate to them in a way that they're going to be able to interpret in a healthy manner and the way you intended them to interpret it. Because if we don't know that, the other person tends to filter information in this way. Like, for example, I can be very sarcastic and I can be playful and I can, I sometimes say whatever's in my mind. You know, my best friends are always like, it's Betsy. Because they know. They know that I, you know, that I say whatever I think and that's okay. But I know not to be that way with certain people that are more vulnerable or delicate or tend to take things personal or be offended by those kinds of things. So if I know that someone's a certain way, then I'm not going to use sarcasm as a way of communicating or as a way of trying to include humor. However, if I don't know the person, then I try to test the waters, like, let me see how this person feels about this. And if they take it well, then maybe I can. And that's how you get to know the people around you that are not necessarily already in the same household or that you don't know too well. But it's important to pay attention to your filter. Now, there's negative things in our filters that we want to get rid of, like maybe taking things too personal, being self conscious, not being confident, or feeling that people take advantage of us or that they're not considering us. All these things that may come from our previous family of origin experiences, there's those things that we may want to improve and fix or get rid of. We don't get rid of them entirely, but we can definitely improve them and be aware of them so that we can develop the tools to overcome them. But we also need to look at the things that are positive and we want to continue to leave as a legacy to the people that follow us. So, for example, values and faith are in that filter. So when you go through a really difficult situation in life and you filter it and there's faith there, you may think of it as, you know, what if God is allowing this, then maybe it's just an opportunity for growth, an opportunity to learn something, to reach out, to get support, to get closer to him. So then faith, which is a positive protective factor, can be used in a positive manner. In our filter, the same situation can go through the filter of somebody that doesn't believe, not even in electricity, and that person's gonna feel extremely hopeless and is gonna feel helpless, and like, life is crumbling down and like, they're hitting rock bottom. And they may not realize that rock bottom is an opportunity to just come up. So there's a lot. There's a lot of good things in our filter. We just have to pay attention to what do we want to keep and what do we want to get rid of. And many times we do that on our own. But when we're in relationships that are significant and that have to be considered, then we need to also sit down with our significant other, our family members, our team at work, and figure out, as a team, as a we, what do we want to keep in our filters and what are we bringing to our common filter. So that's filter infuse, and I hope you get to start evaluating yours and exploring yours to see what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.