Three Lenses That Distort Your Reality – and how to bring them into focus! (Part 1)

(Part 1 of 3)
By Steven Reeder, CPC, ELI-MP

I wore glasses constantly while growing up, so I spent a lot of time behind a phoropter.  A phoropter is that contraption at the eye doctor’s office that we look through, while the doctor turns and flips a myriad of lenses, altering our vision.  The doctor will ask, “Which looks better, A or B?” and continue to turn those lenses until we can see more clearly.

After a few years of wearing glasses, I made an interesting observation.  If I tilted my glasses just so and looked through the bottom of the frames, the images I saw were even sharper than when I wore my glasses at normal level.  I thought it an odd little secret I had discovered.  Wouldn’t it be something if my glasses could be made this clear all the time?

My clever secret to seeing the world more clearly was shattered however (though thankfully, not literally the glasses) during a visit to a new eye doctor.  When I sat down behind the phoropter, he instructed me specifically to look directly through the center of the lenses.  So that was how I got such clarity through the bottom of my lenses!  Apparently, I had been slouching and looking through the bottom of the phoropter, thus that was where my prescription was being set!  What nerve of those previous doctors to not tell me how to view the eye chart correctly!

Often in life, we do our very best with the information we have at any moment.  We may get an upgrade to our perspective from time to time and kudos us when we do!  Until then, we may not even know what we’re missing.

In my previous article [see The Reality You Didn’t Mean to Create!], we discussed what it means to create our own reality.  Part of the struggle we face when creating a reality that we truly desire comes in actively managing our thousands of thoughts.  It doesn’t take much for our minds to run amok.  Yet how we see the world is very much like looking through a phoropter. Each thought can act as a turn of the dial, or a completely new lens mounted on the phoropter of our own reality.  Not only must we contend with our own lenses forming our vision, but we interact daily with other people who are looking through their own sets of lenses, set by their past thoughts and experiences at varying degrees of clarity (or distortion.)

It would be overwhelming to wrangle those 3,000 thoughts per hour, and no one would recommend tackling them one by one.  However, when we see these thoughts as having similar roots and origins, we can go a long way to identify those clusters of thoughts which have the most impact, both positively and negatively, in creating our reality.

Here is the first of three thought patterns that can play havoc in spinning the lenses on our phoropter of reality, and what to do when you see them coming!

Change Your Life thru Coaching

Limiting Beliefs

It is as it is… or is it?  We often decide something is true that may not necessarily be so, but because we live our life as if it is true, we can then only produce results that stem from that belief being true.

It’s better to be young than old.  It’s better to live over here than over there. There are not enough hours in the day.  All Christians are homophobic. I can’t get a job because the economy is so bad.   Since this has happened to me before, it’s going to happen to me again, so why bother? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.   The key theme in all these is that they are beliefs, not truths!  They are true only insofar as we believe them to be.

For the longest time, I believed I could never be a hard rock musician because I was gay.  I was certain audiences would never accept a gay man playing a loud guitar, singing about other hot men.   I deduced this through watching all the straight white rock stars[i] swagger across MTV draped in hot babes.  My exhaustive search for openly gay male artists playing rock and roll turned up instead lots of dance, drag, a cappella and folk artists.  Since I could find nothing to prove otherwise, I assumed nothing outside of those styles existed.

Then I tried something.  I started with a coffee mug someone gave me, on which was inscribed, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  I decided I would be a gay man playing a loud guitar, singing about other hot men.  I knew what I wanted it to look and sound like, so why was I waiting for someone else to do it?  I recorded a full-length CD of my own songs plus a few covers, then performed live at pride festivals.  I did not change the world; I only changed my world.

Wouldn’t you know, not long after I launched that project, I began to find other gay music artists rocking their niche (figuratively and literally.)  Sid Spencer was gay country when gay country wasn’t cool.  Jinx Titanic was already busting eardrums before I recorded a single note.  Tommy Johns rocked houses from Seattle to Pennsylvania.  This revealed another truth about the universe: sometimes you get the validation and support you need only after you commit to walking the walk.

If limiting beliefs are holding you back from who and where you want to be, ask yourself some of the following questions:  How true is that belief really?  Is this true for everyone, or just me? Where did that idea come from?  How does it serve me believe this? What could I accomplish if I did not believe this?

One more thing:  with these questions, take some time, get quiet and truly contemplate answers to these questions, and the implication of those answers.  They’re deep and merit your time and reflection. You’re worth it.

Next time, we’ll discuss Interpretations and how that lens can distort your reality.

Steven Reeder, CPC, ELI-MP

Two things in life strike him to the core:  rock and roll, and personal growth and development. Electric guitars move his outer body, while the pursuit of wisdom and discernment moves his inner body.  Fluent in the work of Caroline Myss, Neale Donald Walsch and Bruce Schneider’s Energy Leadership, Steven is best known for taking all this information and synthesizing it into practical, tangible material that is immediately applicable to life for instant impact.  Steven combines his knowledge of the metaphysical and the practical to create a unique approach to helping you create your best life.  Steven is an Energy Leadership Master Practitioner and Certified Professional Coach. Steven can be found  at  Steven Reeder.com