3 ways the brain filters information: your ideas need to make it past these filters

In a previous article, I wrote that every idea you offer is landing on a nervous system (with a history and in a particular state)...

if that system isn’t in a state that allows it to open to new information, it doesn’t matter how good your strategies are or how research-supported your tools are…

those tools and strategies aren’t able to be received by the system in front of you.

A regulated state opens the door.

But another force is influencing all of these systems before the interaction even happens.

Words and ideas need to make it past a filter

A mindset is a set of often-activated  electrochemical firing patterns.

Mindsets are in many ways cause-and-effect models your brain built out of what has surrounded you*

*(especially during the years your prefrontal cortex was still under construction, but this process is continuously happen throughout our lives).

Those predictive patterns serve as gate-keepers for what we do with all of the incoming data that surrounds us.

One way mental models have been described is by having three types of filters for incoming information* (Arango, 1998 -as explored by Duffy, 2014 )

#1 -  It can block the information entirely.

#2 - It can let it in but bend it first, so it confirms what's already there.

#3 - Or it can let it in unchanged, but only if it already fits.

*inside Teach Mindset Science , you get my "Neuro-Influencer Toolkit, which goes into mindset and paradigm research, plus embodied activities to help people feel a shift in their mindset

When you offer a regulation or personal growth tool  to someone whose model says 'this is just how I am'

.. you’re handing them information that has to survive a filter.

And that filter was built to protect a prediction.

So if what you’re offering doesn’t fit that predictive pattern, it can often get blocked
(filter #1)

Or...  it gets warped, bent into something like:

 "that's nice for people who are naturally calm, but that’s not me."
 (filter #2)

Or.. it's let in only in a shape that fits the prediction..

"great, one more thing I'm failing at." 
(filter #3)

This is why the same sentence can:

• lands like a revelation for one person
• Feel like an attack for someone else,
• Get completely shrugged off by another person.

I’ve said this before.. None of us are perceiving the same ‘reality’.  We are perceiving everything through filters built from our past.

There’s a question that is being ‘asked’ by below-conscious systems within us every time we are offered a new idea, tool, learning opportunity .. 

It's: is this part of me the kind of thing that changes at all?

In Tomorrow's Email..  I'll share 2 specific tools we can use to help people expand and evolve these filters, so that they can open up to their inner and outer worlds in ways, rather than shrink away from them..

P.S. .  Teach Mindset Science shows you the neuroscience behind how those predictive filters are formed, and how to help create the kinds of experiences that allow those filters to soften and expand.  You'll learn the neuroscience of mindset formation, the research behind lasting belief change, and practical ways to help people move from protecting old predictions to exploring new possibilities.

When people begin to see themselves differently, entirely new possibilities become available.

Grab it here:  stefaniefaye.com/mindset

Teach the Nervous System answers: 

All of my micro-courses are designed to be used together. The order to do them in is more based on what sparks your interest first!  You can binge watch the 5-10 minute videos and then return to them and the supporting material later 🙂