You Don’t See Reality

You Don’t See Reality—In Fact, You Can’t!

Have you ever felt stuck in a loop—where the same challenges, patterns, and frustrations keep showing up in your life? Maybe it’s relationships, career struggles, or self-doubt that won’t seem to budge, no matter what you do. What if I told you that you’re not actually experiencing reality as it is, but as your mind has been conditioned to see it?

This isn’t about positive thinking or wishful visualization—it’s about understanding how your brain filters reality and how you can change that filter to experience a completely different life.

“You don’t see reality—In fact, you can’t! You only see a distorted, generalized, and partial version of it.”

What’s Actually Happening?

There are 2 million bits of information coming at you every second. Out of those 2 million bits, your unconscious mindfilters through all of them and hands over to your conscious mind just 126 bits—a tiny pinpoint of focus.

But here’s the kicker: your unconscious mind doesn’t just randomly pick 126 bits. It decides what to give you based on:

• Your values

• Your emotional baggage

• Your limiting beliefs

• Your past experiences

• What it thinks is a priority for you

Your unconscious mind is doing its best to be of service, but if you have an old program—one that kept you safe as a child but is now disruptive to your adult life—it will still be operating from that space. This means you won’t even perceive certain opportunities, positive experiences, or ways life is working for you if your unconscious mind isn’t programmed to recognize them.

How This Plays Out in Real Life

1. Dating with a Low Self-Worth Filter

Imagine you go on a first date. If you hold the belief “I’m not lovable”, your unconscious mind will filter the interaction through that lens. You will selectively focus on anything that seems to confirm that belief.

For example:

• Your date checks their phone. Instead of considering that they might be dealing with a work message, a family situation, or simply a phone habit, you interpret it as “They’re bored. They’re not interested in me.”

• They pause before responding to a question. Instead of assuming they are thinking, you see it as “They don’t like what I just said.”

Meanwhile, you miss the 50 other signs they are engaged and enjoying the date. Your perception is projection. You’re filtering the world through your belief system rather than seeing reality.

2. Career and Opportunity Blindness

Let’s say you have the belief “It’s impossible to break into this industry.”

When you believe that:

• You look for proof that it’s true (job rejections, competitive markets, industry gatekeeping).

• You filter out any evidence that contradicts it (people who transitioned into the industry, job openings, mentors willing to help).

• You don’t try as hard, because what’s the point?

Yet the truth is, there are people working in that industry—they got in somehow. But if you’re fixated on why it won’t work, you won’t see the 2 million other ways it actually could.

What If You Used This to Your Advantage?

The first step is simply realizing that there are other possibilities for what your reality could be. The way you’re experiencing life right now isn’t the only way it could feel—there are other ways to perceive it, other ways to interact with it, and other ways to create outcomes.

If perception is projection—if your experience is all filtered through your perceptions—then you have the power to change your reality by changing your perception. But how do you do that? It’s not by trying to change or control your external circumstances. Instead, it’s about changing your internal environment.

This is good news—because while you can’t control everything in reality, you can control how you respond to it and where you place your focus.

Living in Cause vs. Living in Effect

When you live in effect, life happens to you. You feel at the mercy of external circumstances, blaming situations or other people for what’s happening. But when you live in cause, you recognize that while you can’t control everything, you docontrol how you respond—and that’s where your power lies.

Your reality is shaped by the meanings you assign to it. If you believe life is hard, you’ll find evidence for it. If you believe opportunities are everywhere, you’ll start seeing them. Shifting those meanings shifts your experience.

Here’s how:

• Expand Awareness: Start paying attention to your thoughts without judgment or attachment—just notice them. What are they saying? Are they reinforcing an outdated belief? Mindfulness, journaling, and meditation help widen your lens and give you clarity on what’s actually happening.

• Rewire Beliefs: The 126 bits your mind hands you are based on what you believe is true. Shift those beliefs, and you’ll shift your reality. NLP techniques and coaching can make fast work of this, but you can also do it yourself by simply looking at your situation differently. Find evidence of different realities—if you believe something is impossible, seek out examples of people who have done it. If you think you’re not good enough, look at past experiences where you’ve succeeded.

• Conscious Attention: Actively choose what you focus on. If you don’t like your reality, set down the 126 bits you’re currently fixated on and pick up new ones. Direct your attention to the things that expand your opportunities, rather than confirm your limitations.

Ready to Shift Your Reality?

Take 5 minutes today and write down 10 ways life is already working FOR you—things you’ve been ignoring, taking for granted, or dismissing. Then, go a step further: allow yourself to fully feel these truths in your body. Notice what shifts when you focus on what’s going well instead of what’s missing. You might be surprised at how much power you actually have to shape your own reality.

Wanna take this deeper? Get guided support to change your life with lessons like this by scheduling a free session with me: www.tennyzen.com/schedule.