How To Adjust Your Lens

In previous articles I've discussed some framing basics. Obviously, framing can't be summed up in a few little articles, but it's a foundation from which to build our persuasion arsenals.

With frames in mind, it's time to examine the lenses we're looking through. If you wear glasses to see better, you don't walk around with just frames on, you have lenses made to fit your prescription.

Some lenses distort. Drug addicts and alcoholics have frames of 'how can I get more of what I want'? They look through highly distorted lenses of denial much of the time.

We all have specific lenses. If our issues are intense enough to warp reality then our lenses too will be distorted. From the time I was young I had a strong lens when it came to sugary foods. My blood sugar was so out of whack that after I finished a meal, I'd start thinking about the next. I had an overpowering focus on unhealthy and starchy foods. I had a fear of scarcity. Adjusting my lens has changed everything.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are some people who look in the mirror and see themselves as fat when they are actually anorexic having little or no body fat at all. This is called body dismorphic disorder and is a distorted lens.

Social issues can also be thought of as lenses. I recently read about a summer camp for young people where campers 'unlearn' various social issues--racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. The presupposition on the part of the people running the camp is that everyone who grows up in the U.S. has been raised in a racist, sexist society and the only way change and equality can be realized is through examining the tainted lenses through which we've been viewing culture.

Whether or not this is something you believe, it is a strong frame. By unlearning the isms, the camp facilitators believe the lens becomes less distorted.

There are many distortions that prevent us from seeing the real picture. Religious fanaticism, for one. Think about how cracked, scratched and myopic is the lens of a suicide bomber. That's way beyond framing. That's utter distortion.

Addicts have distortions, violent criminals, the mentally ill. . . Extremists such as the Klan literally view the world in terms of 'black and white'.

Think on how your lenses might be distorted. In persuasion one of the first steps to truly persuasion excellence is the ability to persuade ourselves. This isn't to say that we have to eliminate all of the things we hold near and dear such as blockages and weaknesses and blind spots (though self improvement is never a bad thing)--I'm suggesting that if we realize what we believe is dictated by our particular fames and lenses, we must also believe that there may be an equally strong opposing belief out there somewhere.

I'll tell you a little secret. My lens is powerfully, intensely, vigorously focused on persuasion. Some might thing to the extreme. Okay, maybe that's not a secret. But it's definitely my lens to the world and I'm thrilled to share it with you.

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