Focus Filters

Focus is a word you’ll keep hearing from me... What are you focusing on? Is it towards what you want or towards what you don’t want? So many people can tell you what they don’t want in life and struggle to specify what they would like instead. Whatever you focus on dominantly, you will create and attract in your life. Full stop.

How would you like to learn a model that will help you understand why people produce certain behaviour? Would you be interested to have a model that will dramatically increase your successful understanding of your model of the world? Being able to know WHY you do what you do? You’d want to understand then about Focus Filters.

We put all the systems that influence/shape your Focus in 3 categories. We have:

- Core Focus Filters (CFF)
- Process Focus Filters (PFF)
- Key Focus Filter (KFF)

Core Focus Filters (CFF)

Core focus filters are about human needs. There are endless models of human needs, basic human needs, fundamental human needs... and so on. I tested few models and they all made sense and produce some results. I chose to follow the model that made most sense to me personally, and the one that my clients could resonate the most, the one that is easy to explain and use in practice. The one I chose is a model adopted from Anthony Robbins, and it’s the model he’s been using for decades.

Core human needs should not be mistaken for values, they are needs and there is a big difference! Tony often says: "You don’t always get what you want, but you always get what you need." Our Core Focus Filters or our core human needs are not just wants and desires, but profound needs which service the basis of every choice we make! People will always find the way to fulfil their needs, some find positive, beneficial ways to meet their needs, and some meet them in most destructive ways. You already learned that there is a positive intent behind every behaviour. The most destructive behaviours can be justified internally by meeting our core needs!

People are driven to fulfil the needs that I am about to introduce to you. In theory, any behaviour that you are producing is geared to fulfil one of those needs — let’s have a look at them quickly.

Certainty
A need for Certainty is huge for most people. This need reflects in our lives through craving and insisting on security, highly predictable future, safety, consistency in our relationships, secure environment, financial security, secure job, and alike.

Variety
Here comes the paradox, once people get enough Certainty... they get bored, and they start needing Variety. Mind you though, the need for Variety is not only present when the need for Certainty is fulfilled! We value our needs in different, individual orders, based on our conditioning. Variety is just the opposite of Certainty, it’s about not knowing, risk, challenges that will exercise our physical and emotional range, and surprises. Variety is the spice of life.

Significance
Significance reflects our need for being important in some way, wordy of things and experiences, caring about other’s perception of you, sense of being needed, sense of purpose, sense of meaning, feeling of importance, uniqueness, separation, status...

Love/Connection
Love/Connection resembles our need to experience feeling loved; connected with others, bonding, oneness, sharing, intimacy, feeling a part of, at one with, sense of meaning...

Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love and Connection are the needs of our body. These needs will be met by all people, one way or another. We will go lengths to meet these needs from the most destructive and un-ecological ways to the desired and serving, beneficial ways. We will use different strategies and will do ANYTHING to meet our first four needs in our lives. We must meet them; they are the needs of our body.

We also have needs of our souls, of our spirit and they are the need for Growth and Contribution.

Growth
Our need for Growth is reflected in any behaviour supporting growth, expansion, learning, becoming more... when we stop growing, we die. We need to constantly develop emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Contribution
Contribution is about going beyond your own needs and contributing to others, making a difference for others and our planet, helping, educating... coaching?

Sadly, many people seldom discover the last two, without which one can never be sincerely content with one’s life. Growth is so stuck on me that I seldom enjoy resting. I use most of my free time to study, read books, research, seek for new knowledge, create things didn’t exist before... which is all leading me to inevitable and constant Growth. Remember that you can just be and stay where you are? I am in it for the learning’s, ensuring expansion and progress without which we are disintegrating, dying.  And life supports life... The gift of giving to others, contributing, is just so fulfilling and rewarding.

When I discovered core needs of my spirit, my life has changed dramatically. I found motivation, drive and energy beyond of what I’ve ever experienced before. Thirst for knowledge and enhancing someone’s life for better is a true gift that you are giving to yourself really. By discovering and fulfilling these two needs of my spirit, my life has never been the same again.

When life stops being about me, me, me... and you start contributing to other people’s lives, when you have goals bigger than yourself, your mind and body will shift to so much higher vibratory state that you can experience and start attracting so much beauty in your life that you perhaps never thought possible.

All human beings are consistently seeking to meet our core needs, but we tend to value two of them above others. These six core human needs are our Core Focus Filters, and the dominant two will influence your behaviour the most.

For an example, someone who values Certainty will make very different choices than someone who values Variety more. And someone who values Significance more than
Love and Connection will make radically different choices in life, won’t they?

Exercise for you:

1. Write down all the ways you currently get: Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love/Connection, Growth and Contribution in your life in general.

2. Answer the following questions (take your time and think about it):
a. What is that drives you? What are your top 2 Core Focus Filters? Which two you value most?
b. How does this impact the quality of your life? What are the consequences (positive and negative) of valuing these needs in this order?

Process Focus Filters (PFF)

Second category of our Filters is Process Focus Filters (PFF) and these are process driven Filters that shape our Focus and our reality. This is our:

Meta Programs
Values
Beliefs
Memories
Decisions
Attitudes
Language
Time/ Space Matter/ Energy

Key Focus Filter (KFF)

I am sure you realize how important are both Core Focus Filters and Process Focus Filters in the context of shaping our Focus and determining our behaviour, hence producing results in our lives. How important do you think could be something that we called Key Focus Filter (KFF)?

This one holds the Key of your Focus. This Filter filters all the incoming information and determines what’s important and what isn’t, based on all the other Filters obviously. Your KFF is more like a sum total of all your Filters, as your mind created a question, usually just one question that sums up all your Filters together.

Key Focus Filter is basically one question that filters your conscious and unconscious thinking, all the time. This Filter determines what you will notice and experience in life... or not. So, your Key Focus Filter is simply a question that you keep asking yourself, consciously or unconsciously, regardless of what you are doing.

People tend to ask this one question all the time, it’s like a broken record in one’s mind, it keeps running in the background...

Now, if I was you today, learning and absorbing all this new information, I would start wondering now... and everybody knows that it’s a good thing to wonder... about my Key Focus Filter... what is that one question that I keep asking myself... what is that one question that keeps popping up no matter what I do? If I were you I would think something like that now.

Now, you may already be aware of it, yet you may take some time to become aware of it consciously too, so that you are not only unconscious about it. If I were you now, I would definitely want to find out what my KFF is.

Here is how your KFF fits in the bigger picture:

Significant emotional event happens and we filter it through our reference of extreme pain or pleasure (this refers to our beliefs of extreme consequence, life or death, fight or flight).

Our Key Focus Filter Kicks in and this is what we will discuss in a moment.

From there on, we simply notice and believe, feel the emotions, take actions/decisions, and create results in life. And process cycles itself and we keep conditioning our minds — our Core and Process Focus Filters (our needs, values, beliefs, memories, decisions, attitudes...)

This process is rather important to understand. Can you see how this process shapes our model of the world, influences our thinking, gets us to feel a certain way, take actions and ultimately produce results in our lives?

KFF seems to be outside of your conditioned mind and it’s actually heavily involved in constant conditioning process. Where does KFF belong and why is this so crucially important?

KFF filters your Focus, your thoughts and the way you will feel about something, influencing the way you will react about it. It constantly runs in your mind on auto pilot, and as you know by now... what you look for — you will find... what you think about, you become about... what you focus on, you create.

You’ve seen above image already and I'd like to go over it one more time. In the image above, we have certain Events happening in our life. These events, that information from the outside world will come in through our 5 Senses (VAKOG) plus our Self Talk (Ad).  And our Reticular Activation System (RAS) will according to our Filters, Delete, Distort and Generalize that information.

This process creates our Internal Representation, as explained earlier. Our Internal
Representation, constantly combined with our Physiology creates our State. State dictates our Behaviour and we create certain Results in our lives.

Your Key Focus Filter is heavily involved in the process of your RAS deciding what to Delete, what to Distort and what to Generalize, as it insists on filtering majority of that information through that one question... that one question that is so important to you... that you would filter all the incoming information as if your life depended on it.

This filter works in any context and it carries massive weight, it’s utterly important to you. In most cases, you would feel so strongly about this question that it would seem totally natural and a must to you. So, what are the criteria for recognizing/eliciting our KFF? How do we know whether we’ve got the real KFF or not?

Key Focus Filter Criteria
The true KFF is easy to recognize, as it would have the following attributes:

- You would believe that it would lead you to the ultimate success, accomplishment, anything where you would definitely avoid pain and gain pleasure.
- If you fail to live by this question, you believe you will be in a horrible pain, a life or death (a real survival instinct question).
- It would have to have a strong emotional charge to the question.
- It would be in immediate connection to your identity.

Now when you come for the coaching we will elicit your current Key Focus Filter and analyse it to see if it serves you or not.  Now, only in case you are not completely happy with your old KFF and only if you could think of a much better one, the one that would serve your purpose better... only then we will go ahead and redesign it, or make a brand new one.

You may find your question to be totally unproductive, knowing what you know today; perhaps you find it debilitating, limiting and really not serving you. In which case, we just install a new one!

Later in this coaching, we will cover how to actually redesign/change your KFF easily and effortlessly and install your new KFF and deleting the old one.

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Isobel Esterhuyse

Master Life Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, Dynamic Quantum Time Line Master Practitioner.

Burk Esterhuyse

Certefied NLP Trainer (ANLP), Master Life Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, Dynamic Quantum Time Line Master Practitioner.

Mobile: +27 83 225 0597
E-mail: burk@dqc.co.za