Dr. Glenn, my optometrist asks, “Katherine, please read the letters on line 3 of the eye chart for me.” Looking through the apparatus he has swung before my eyes, I strain to read the letters and attempt to recite the information correctly back to him. The letters are small and blurry… difficult to decipher. Looking through this particular lens, I feel natural and immediate low-level stress and frustration. I struggle to get the answer right and am fairly certain I failed to do so.
I hear the click of another lens fall into place before my eyes, and he asks again that I read the letters. This time, everything’s clearer. Everything’s easier. My mild feelings of stress and strain dissolve into ease and clarity. My eyes didn’t change. The information on the chart didn’t change. But the lens through which I processed the raw data did. Looking through the correct lens, everything’s clear—everything’s easier.
This week you will receive thousands of bits of information about your patients/clients, your business, your people, your finances, your government, your family, yourself, your world, and/or your future. Remember the information is neutral and the degree with which you feel stress, anxiety, worry, and strain around that information will be solely determined by the lens through which you process it. It is uniquely your lens, and you see evidence of this every day as others process the same information differently from you.
If your day or your life is feeling heavy or stressed, check your lens. Change your lens. Ask yourself how this could be serving you? What are you learning or mastering because of it? What if I already knew for sure this would all work out better than I had ever hoped?
One little click can make the whole thing look (and feel) different.
“We see the world not as it is but as we are—or as we are conditioned to see it.”
~ Stephen Covey
