Perception (Lens) — What You Let In, What You Leave Out

There’s a quiet reason two people can walk away from the same moment with completely different certainty. It isn’t always intelligence. It isn’t always maturity. It isn’t even always willingness. Often, it’s something far simpler and far more influential: they didn’t take in the same information.

We like to believe we’re responding to reality as it is. But most of us are responding to reality as it arrives through a lens.

In the 3Ps camera model, perception is the lens. It’s the first point of contact. It determines what gets let in and what gets left out. It decides what you notice, what you ignore, what you zoom in on, and what never even makes it into view. And because it happens so quickly, it rarely feels like a decision. It feels like “what’s obvious.”

That’s why perception is foundational. Before you interpret a situation, you’ve already filtered it.

If you’ve ever heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant, you’ll recognise the pattern. Each person touches one part and describes the whole. One is certain it’s a rope. Another insists it’s a wall. Another argues it’s a spear. They aren’t lying. They aren’t trying to be difficult. They’re working with partial contact—and their certainty comes from mistaking partial contact for the full picture.

That’s what a lens does. It gives you a slice and convinces you it’s the whole.

The lens is shaped over time. It’s shaped by what you’ve had to pay attention to in order to cope. It’s shaped by what you were rewarded for noticing, and what you were punished for missing. It’s shaped by what felt dangerous, what felt unpredictable, what felt scarce, what felt unstable. It’s shaped by the roles you’ve carried, the rooms you’ve learned to survive in, and the stories you’ve had to tell yourself to keep going.

So when someone says, “You’re assuming,” it can sound like an accusation. As if you’re careless. As if you’re making things up. But the deeper truth is more human: your lens is doing what it has learned to do. It’s filtering for what it believes matters.

And what it believes matters is not neutral.

A lens can be tuned to threat. It will let in the sharp edges of a moment and leave out the softness. It will notice the slight change in tone, the pause, the missing reassurance, the unanswered message. It will treat uncertainty as danger and ambiguity as a warning.

A lens can be tuned to rejection. It will let in what looks like exclusion and leave out what looks like ordinary life. It will notice who didn’t respond, who didn’t invite, who didn’t ask. It will treat silence as a verdict.

A lens can be tuned to responsibility. It will let in what isn’t done and leave out what is. It will notice the loose ends, the risks, the gaps. It will treat rest as negligence and support as something you must earn.

A lens can be tuned to scarcity. It will let in what might be lost and leave out what is stable. It will notice the cost, the timing, the competition, the limited window. It will treat opportunity as fragile and safety as temporary.

None of these lenses are “wrong” in the simplistic sense. Many of them were formed in environments where they made perfect sense. The problem isn’t that you have a lens. The problem is when the lens becomes so familiar that you stop recognising it as a lens.

When that happens, the lens becomes your evidence.

And once the lens has selected the evidence, the next step is almost automatic. The processing unit—perspective—takes what the lens has allowed in and turns it into meaning. It decides what it “means” about you, about them, about the future. And then possibility—the image produced—shrinks or expands based on that meaning.

This is why trying to change your life at the level of behaviour can feel like pushing against something invisible. You can tell yourself to “be calm,” but if your lens is filtering for threat, calm will feel like denial. You can tell yourself to “be confident,” but if your lens is filtering for rejection, confidence will feel like arrogance. You can tell yourself to “let it go,” but if your lens is filtering for scarcity, letting go will feel like irresponsibility.

The lens doesn’t just influence what you think. It influences what you can even consider.

So what do you do with this without turning it into self-policing? Without becoming hypervigilant about every thought? Without trying to catch yourself out?

You start with a gentler kind of noticing.

Noticing is different from correcting. Noticing is simply recognising that what you’re seeing is being shaped.

A useful question is: What am I letting in right now? Not what is happening in the world, but what is making it through the lens. What details feel loud? What details feel invisible? What part of the “elephant” am I touching and calling the whole?

And alongside that: What am I leaving out? Not as a moral failing, but as a practical reality. Every lens leaves something out. The question is whether what’s being left out is narrowing your life.

Sometimes the shift is not dramatic. Sometimes it’s as small as letting in one additional piece of information you’ve been filtering out: a moment of effort, a sign of care, a constraint you hadn’t acknowledged, a pattern you’ve been repeating, a need you’ve been minimising. That small widening gives the processing unit new material. And when the processing unit has new material, the image produced changes.

This is where mindset becomes something you can work with, rather than something you have to fight. You’re no longer trying to force a better attitude. You’re learning to adjust the lens.

In the next post, we’ll move from the lens to the processing unit—how perspective turns filtered input into meaning, and why that meaning can feel like truth even when it’s only one interpretation.

• If you’d like to continue the journey through the full 3Ps webinar series, you can explore the events page here: https://www.mindshift202.com/events
• If you’d like to join Webinar 2 (April 25, 2026): Understanding Perception, you can register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4pMs4z8fRWOW0YtVuWZp7w
• If you’d like the deeper, longer-form exploration, the book is here: Questioning the Walls https://amzn.eu/d/015xWd2u
• And if you’d like to talk about what your lens might be filtering for in your own life, you can book a free 30-minute consultation here: https://calendly.com/mindshift202/30-min-free-consultation-call