Understanding what mind filters are and how they work is relatively simple yet profound. Similar to how genetic coding is contained in a strand of DNA, the stories we create about our experience of the defining moments throughout our lives are housed in our mind filters. The evolution of a mind filter looks something like this: Things happen, emotional buttons are pushed, we have an experience, we create a story to justify the emotions, and the story generates a mind filter. The mind filter is then established as a lens through which we see and experience ourselves, the world, and ourselves in the world.
When we are born into this world, we arrive as a clean slate of possibility. At some point, usually between ages three and five, we have an experience, a defining moment where we decide something about ourselves that has us question our goodness, our value, or our abilities.
As we further navigate our formative years, we have more experiences, which, viewed through the original filter—through the lens of a wounded child—create more layers of mind filters. These filters, much like the dirt building up on the windshield of a car, begin to cloud our minds and distort our vision. They hinder our birthright to thrive.
Imagine handing your car keys over to a three-year-old and saying, “You drive.” Poor kid, perched on a stack of books in order to see over the dashboard, legs stretching to reach the wooden blocks strapped to the gas and brake pedals. The idea of this is absurd. Yet, handing your life over to the mind filters established by your wounded child is not any less absurd.
Continuing along our life path, unconsciously adding layer upon layer of mind filters as we go, we acclimate to our obstructed view. The filters become a blueprint for self-imposed limitations and a roadmap to what we believe is possible (or not), and we get to the point where we are driving through life, blind to our potential.
We cannot eliminate these mind filters or the facts of our past that they represent: What has happened cannot be unhappened. However, we can renegotiate their value and purpose while allocating them to “one side” of our mind—hence the name Mind Filter Combover. Within this action, we can consciously choose to recategorize the facts of our past as reference data rather than unalterable truth. Though this data may still inform our vantage point, it no longer dictates our present or future potential. This shift in perspective—much like engaging the windshield wipers of a car—engages our mind in establishing an unobstructed (mind) clearing in which we reconnect to the unfiltered potential we stood in when we first came into this world.
Once we establish these two distinct mental playing fields, a natural and profound activity takes place. Our Head and our Heart begin to communicate with each other, working together as an internal GPS. Our intellectual left brain, our emotional right brain, and our soulful heart brain, working in tandem, give us a more accurate understanding of and access to our creative potential. They transpose our life experience from merely surviving to really thriving.
