The Front of the Box – Our Filters Copy

As we take a look at the inside of the front of the box we notice a few things. The inside front of the physical box has holes for the eyes the nose, mouth and ears. These represents our interface with the world – our senses. The holes in the box are conduits which let information into the box, while also filtering information out.

The drawing on the inside of the box is of a number of filters. The filters we use to interact with the world change what we are able and willing to let into our thinking.

An easy to understand filter is language. If I don’t know Portuguese, and someone speaks to me in Portuguese, I can’t understand. I don’t have a filter able to make meaning out what they are saying, and their messages bounce off the outside of my box.

At any given time, we have dozens of filters in play, helping us make sense of the world around us.

It is a little like the way a water filter will purify murky water. A water filter often uses more than one type of material: it might contain sand, charcoal and other materials, both coarse and fine. Different kinds of contaminants get caught by different parts of the filter and murky water comes out clean.

Our filters on the front of the box are doing the same thing.

Life is very complex and there are limitless stimuli that we could pay attention to or try to make meaning out of, and our filters help us simplify things by eliminating the trivial or unintelligible and focusing on the things that we can understand, and which seem important at the time.

While we think we are experiencing life with 100% accuracy, in fact, the vast majority of what is going on around us is either bouncing off the box because we don’t understand it or because we have determined it is not critical enough to pay attention to.

Because each of our filters are unique to ourselves, it’s not uncommon for us to interpret shared experiences in different ways: my interpretation exists inside of me only after I’ve filtered it. So there’s the event and there’s my perception of that event. My perception of the event happens inside the box, and is impacted by my filters.

Perhaps you’ve experienced watching a movie with a friend. While you both see an identical story play out on screen, your friend’s interpretation of it might be radically different based on your respective filters.

Examples of Common Filters

The filters we have available to us and choose to use at any time too varied to describe in detail here. We share a few here to get you thinking a bit about your own “go to” filters that help you understand the world around you.

Age – Think about who you were fifteen years ago. What was important to you? What did you pay attention to? And now? As we age, we perceive things very differently?
Culture – How were you brought up? What values or behaviors were reinforced by those around you?
Education – What schools did you attend? What subjects attracted you? What extracurricular activities did you engage in?
Work Experience – Each position you hold, each boss you work with, each company you are employed by can impact your filters.
Financial Situation – Are you in debt? Did you just get a raise?
Life Experiences – Both positive and negative life experiences can alter the way we look at the world.
New Job Title – Every promotion comes with the need to adjust our filters and see the business from a new perspective.

All these – and more – are pieces of the puzzle of who we are and what we are willing and able to allow into our invisible thinking box.

Our Filters Impact our Creativity

Our filters are very personal. We are attached to our culture, experience, education, family, or job title. In some ways we use these as a means to define ourselves and for the most part, we not only don’t know how to think beyond them, we may not want to even if we did.

Not only that, our filters are so good at only letting in those things that we can already understand, that we don’t realize that we are editing the world around us, and think we are operating on an accurate view of “reality.” We trust our experience of the events of our lives as “the truth,” when there are any number of stimuli that we filtered out.

Not to say that filtering is a negative thing. It helps us make sense of the world. Imagine if you allowed every possible stimulus into your consciousness. It would overwhelm you and drive you insane. We need language, culture, experience education to form a basis for understanding and interacting with our environment.

And while this filtering process is one of the biggest barriers to our thinking, they also represent one of the most easily understood and commonly used opportunities for thinking more creatively. By increasing awareness of these filters, consciously choosing more helpful filters, creating new filters through gaining new experiences, skill or education we are able to adjust our filters and in so doing, adjust our box to provide new possibilities.

We invite them to think about using other filters:

We can consciously choose our filters. We choose the information we receive by selecting which newspapers to read, which blogs to follow, etc. We are more likely to read newspapers and blogs that express views similar to our own and so our views and attitudes are reinforced.
We can choose the position from which we view an event: think about being offered a promotion that is a great professional opportunity and involves a lot of overseas travel. Viewed as an employee that sounds just great; viewed as the parent of a very young child it might look very different.
We develop new filters. Few people have totally closed minds so we build on what we have:

We can create new filters by getting education or experience, or working in a new role.
We read a book or article and see things differently. We have a conversation with someone and gain new insight or empathy that allows us to see things from a point of view we hadn’t considered before.
We can “borrow” some filters temporarily. We can look at a situation from the perspective of our boss, our partner or a customer. While imagining being that person, and seeing things from their point of view, we can allow in new perspectives and ideas. But this is a bit like holding our breath: we can do it for a while but will soon revert to our ‘normal’ way of thinking. Our boxes are well-trained and efficient at letting us see the things that are important – to us.

Our filters do their best to help use make sense of our world. They help us make the best decisions for ourselves, based on the information we allow to pass through.

And of course, they are imperfect.