The Balsamic Vinegar Filter

A damaged laptop screen taught me an unexpected lesson about human psychology this week.

For nearly a year I had been looking at the world through what I jokingly called a “balsamic vinegar filter”. The screen was cloudy, discoloured and slightly murky, yet after a while I stopped noticing it. It became normal.

It struck me that many of us do exactly the same thing with our thinking.

We all carry assumptions about ourselves, other people and the world around us. Some are helpful. Others quietly distort reality. The trouble is that the filters we see through every day rarely feel like filters. They feel like facts.

This week I had my computer screen replaced.

About a year ago I made the mistake of carrying my lunch and my laptop at the same time. Some salad dressing leaked into my bag and somehow found its way into the screen of my nearly-new MacBook.

The result was odd. The screen still worked perfectly well, but everything appeared slightly murky, as though I was viewing the world through a thin layer of balsamic vinegar.

For months I carried on using it.

The strange thing was that I gradually stopped noticing it. Human beings adapt remarkably quickly. What initially seemed irritating became normal. Only when other people looked at my screen did they comment on how cloudy it was.

“How do you work looking at that all day?”

I had assumed the only solution was replacing the entire computer, which felt expensive and unnecessary given that it was otherwise working perfectly. To my delight, I eventually discovered I could simply replace the screen.

A few days later it was done.

You cannot imagine my joy. Every morning now I open my laptop and the colours are brighter, the text is sharper and the whole experience feels easier.

And it got me thinking.

Most of us are walking through life looking through our own version of a balsamic vinegar filter.

The difference is that we often don’t realise it.

We assume we are seeing reality when in truth we are seeing reality plus our beliefs.

Psychologists call this confirmation bias. We naturally notice evidence that supports what we already believe and tend to overlook evidence that challenges it. We all carry assumptions about ourselves, other people and the world. Many of them were formed years ago, often in childhood, and yet they continue shaping how we interpret events today.

Sometimes these filters serve us.

Often they don’t.

I remember working with a client who had developed a deep belief that people, particularly men, would eventually let her down.

She had recently started dating again in midlife and met a man she genuinely liked. After a promising date she didn’t hear from him for a day and by the time our coaching session arrived she was furious.

She told me how rude he was, how disrespectful, how she knew he was going to ghost her. Feeling hurt and rejected, she had already sent him a hostile text message expressing her disappointment.

The following week she arrived looking slightly sheepish.

It turned out that shortly after their date he had left her a lovely voicemail telling her how much he had enjoyed meeting her and asking when she would like to see each other again.

She simply hadn’t listened to it.

Her filter had done its job. The story she expected to be true felt more believable than the evidence itself. The possibility that this man might actually be interested simply didn’t fit with the narrative she had carried for years, so her mind filled in the gaps with a conclusion that felt familiar.

For years one of my own filters was the belief that life was easier for other people.

It is not difficult to see where that belief came from, but left unchecked it colours the way I view the world. It can pull me towards comparison and envy whilst blinding me to the parts of other people’s lives that I would not choose for myself.

Only recently I found myself envying a friend’s beautiful home and apparently happy marriage. What I had conveniently forgotten in that moment was the tragedy that sits alongside those things: the loss of her child at the age of eight.

On another occasion I found myself envying someone’s successful television career. What disappeared from view was the fact that she lives with significant health problems and, despite desperately wanting children, never had them.

These subconscious filters are remarkably good at cherry-picking information. They highlight the evidence that supports the story we already believe and quietly push contradictory evidence into the background. We see what confirms our assumptions and overlook much of the rest.

One of the things I have learned, both from being coached and from coaching others, is that the biggest breakthroughs rarely come from solving a problem.

More often they come from recognising the lens through which we are viewing the problem in the first place.

A client arrives convinced they are failing, that everyone else has life figured out, that they are too old to change careers, too damaged to find love, or too late to create something meaningful. They are usually intelligent, capable people. What is holding them back is not a lack of ability but a perspective that has become so familiar it feels like reality.

When that lens becomes visible, something shifts. We become curious. We start questioning assumptions that previously felt unquestionable. We look for evidence that we may have ignored. New possibilities appear where before there seemed to be none.

The screen on my laptop wasn’t broken. For a year I simply assumed that what I was seeing was normal. It never occurred to me that I was looking at the world through a filter.

Perhaps the same is true of some of the stories we tell ourselves.

Three small actions this week.

Notice one recurring thought about yourself, other people or your future. Ask yourself whether it is a fact or an interpretation.

Identify one situation where you may have jumped to a conclusion. Consider what other explanations might also be true.

Write down one belief that repeatedly limits you. Ask yourself what evidence exists on the other side of that story.

Perhaps that is why these filters can be so powerful.

We don’t argue with them because we rarely recognise them as opinions. They feel like facts. They become the background operating system through which we interpret relationships, opportunities, setbacks and successes.

The challenge is not to eliminate every filter. That would be impossible.

The challenge is to notice them.

Because once we can see the lens, we have a choice about whether we continue looking through it.

And that, in my experience, is where change begins.

What filter do you notice yourself looking through most often?

Warmly,

Katinka

www.kbnlifecoaching.co.uk