Have you ever wondered how two people can have a completely different experiences of the same event?
Or different relationships with family members?
When I was younger, I thought everyone in my family had the same experience of each other. So I was shocked when I learned that we all had different experiences.
So here is some interesting nerdy stuff about how we see our world. Science has found that we can see 6E+80 bits of information per second in the universe. So that’s 6 with 80 zero’s behind it. So for the curious folks, that looks like this: 600 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000.
Now, out of that enormous number, the human brain can process only 11,000,00 bits of information per second. So in comparison, 11 Million is now a small number, and we’re not even to how much the conscious mind can process.
On average, the conscious mind can process 40-50 bits of information per second; at max, it’s 126 bits.
Can you see how we all have different experiences yet? That’s all that’s in our external world. I still need to dive into our internal filtering system.
What is the Primary Representational System?
We have our Five Senses. These are Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory. One of these is our Primary Representational System.
We don’t stop there; we immediately delete, distort, and generalize many bits of information before going through the following filters.
We filter through our Meta-Programs, Values, Beliefs, Memories, and Decisions.
If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a treat, so I’m going to give you a tip for finding your Primary Representational System.
A key to finding your Primary Representational System is in your language. Yup, in your words. The predicates you use lean heavily on Visual, Auditory, or Kinesthetic.
Try this with me.
Think about walking into a friend’s house and they have it all decked out for the holidays. Out of the following three sentences, which one do you most identify as being you?
- They have a Christmas tree beautifully decorated, stalkings hanging from the mantel. They have garlands everywhere, and everyone has the best ugly Christmas sweaters.
- As you walk in, you notice the holiday music playing in the background. From the other room, you hear everyone laughing it up and having a great time.
- Immediately when you walk in, you can feel the warmth of the fire. You take a deep breath, and it feels good to be there with the amount of happiness and cheers coming from everyone.
Great, you’ve appropriately chosen your Primary Representational System!
Want to learn more?
Register for my next NLP Practitioner Course.