You don’t see the world as it is. You see it as you are.
How real is reality?
After embarking on this self-development and mindset journey, one truth I can no longer deny is that reality is a deeply subjective, malleable thing.
Beyond our religious and spiritual beliefs - which heavily shape our daily experiences - science proves that what we see, hear, taste, or feel isn’t the whole picture. In fact, it’s rarely even the true picture.
In this blog, we explore the fascinating science of human perception. While this is a simplified view of our complex bodies, glimpsing how the brain filters the world helps us weaken our rigid, stressful limitations. This opens up space for the imperceptible to come through, empowering us to unlock a whole new range of possibilities.
1. The physical filter: Is reality what we can perceive?
We take in the world through our sensory organs. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are constantly observing the environment and sending electrical reports to our brains in a beautifully orchestrated chain of flow.
However, science proves that our senses only capture a tiny fraction of physical reality.
Our eyes, for example. Even with perfect 20/20 vision, we can only detect a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum known as visible light. For humans, this spans within a limited wavelength (380 to 750 nanometers) and frequency (400 to 790 terahertz). The rest - like infrared, ultraviolet, and radio waves - are completely invisible to us. Shockingly, research indicates that what the human eye can only see is only about 0.0035% of the total spectrum.
Similarly to our vision, our hearing is just as limited.
Have you ever seen one of those high-pitched whistles used to call back dogs? We can’t hear them. That’s because humans can hear frequencies between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (vibrations per second), while a dog’s auditive span, for example, ranges from 67 Hz to 45,000 Hz.
Those are just two examples. Even though our sensory organs and brain structure are extremely advanced, there is so much of the world that we simply don’t have the biological antennas to detect.
2. The bandwidth filters: Is reality what we are consciously aware of?
Even within the limited data our senses can catch, we can only consciously process a tiny fraction of it. One way of understanding this is through the concept of limited cognitive bandwidth - the idea that our conscious attention has a very limited capacity.
Figures commonly cited in discussions of attention and Flow Theory, associated with psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi, suggest that:
- Our nervous system subconsciously absorbs roughly 11 million bits of sensory information every second from our sensory organs.
- Our conscious awareness can only process a maximum of 110 to 120 bits per second.
To put that into perspective, simply listening to a person talk and decoding their words consumes about 40 to 60 bits per second.
Furthermore, recent neuroscience research from Caltech suggests that deliberate human thought might operate at an even slower rate of just 10 bits per second.
This means that our conscious mind is a massive bottleneck. We consciously experience is only a very small slice of everything that is available to us. But it exits for a valid reason: if we were to notice everything at once, our brain would instantly overheat and crash.
The Brain's Ultimate Gatekeeper: The RAS and the Thalamus
The system that helps us select what gets our attention from all that incoming information includes a network at the base of our brainstem called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
The RAS acts a little like a security guard performing biological triage. It helps regulate arousal and alertness, and plays a role in directing our attention towards information that may be important.
The RAS prioritises things that may be relevant to our survival, such as a sudden loud noise. But what we pay attention to is also influenced by things like our current focus, expectations, experiences and what feels personally relevant to us.
3. The psychological filters: Is reality what we expect it to be?
Once those 110 bits of data finally reach our conscious mind, they are still not processed objectively. Instead, our brain runs a powerful psychological software called Confirmation Bias.
Coined by psychologist Peter Wason in 1960, Confirmation Bias describes our tendency to look for, interpret and remember information in ways that can support what we already believe. It can show up in:
- How we receive information: it actively seeks out information that supports our assumptions.
- How we interpret data: whenever we are faced with ambiguous evidence, it twists it to support your side.
- How we recall data: if selectively remembers details that back up our opinions and conveniently forgets the rest.
We could joke that ‘everyone loves being right’, but for our brain, that’s a survival mechanism. If your mental map of the world is wrong, it implies that the world is unpredictable and dangerous, which triggers primal anxiety and fear. When our expectations are confirmed, this can feel rewarding and reinforce the beliefs and patterns we already hold.
Our tendency to rely on existing mental models can help us make sense of a complex and uncertain world quickly - but it can also reinforce beliefs that aren't serving us.
In Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), this curated view of reality is called ‘our map of the world’. We use the NLP filters of Deletion, Distortion, and Generalisation to turn the world's vast territory into a highly edited, deeply personal internal map.
Overview: human reality filtering 'steps'
When we piece it together, in a very simplistic view, our subjective reality is created like this:
Universe
> Contains infinite, unquantifiable bits of data.
Our senses / subconscious
> Filter out 99.99% of the universe, perceiving only a fraction of it within human range.Our Reticular Activating System & other brain departments
> Filters out 99.99% of that sensory data, and prioritise the information we notice consciously.
Our Confirmation Bias, and other mental filters
> interpret and make sense of what we notice.
= our subjective reality
This means...
It is safe to say that the reality you experience isn't 'the' reality - it is your reality. Between the millions of data points your body cannot detect, and the heavy mental filtering that happens inside your brain, you are actively shaping the way you experience the world you live in.
But here is the most empowering part: because you create your map, you can change it.
By intentionally directing your focus and challenging your confirmation biases, you can train your brain to notice different possibilities and respond differently to the world around you.
What new rules are you ready to install in your mind today?
If you would like to change your map of the world, I can help. As a trained EFT and NLP therapist, I can help you explore the patterns, assumptions and automatic filters that shape how you experience the world - and begin to create new ones.