Reality is the lens you choose to look through every day

On a submarine hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface, the world looks nothing like the dinner rooms on dry land. One morning, a young naval officer found himself behind the wheel of a million-pound vessel as it plunged at a sixty-degree angle toward the seabed. The officer looked down and did what any brain trained on solid ground would do—he saw “floor equals down.” He braced himself for impact and was sure the deck was slipping away. Only later did he learn that on a sub, “down” depends on where you’re pointed.

Back on land, his commander calmly explained that the hull’s tilt had only shifted the floor’s orientation; the chair was bolted in precisely for that reason. This single lesson revealed the brain’s shortcut: we trust familiar lenses—gravity, habit, default narratives—without questioning whether they still apply. Yet in real life, every situation offers multiple angles, each just as valid and often carrying vastly different meaning.

Decades of neuroscience now confirm what that submarine taught the officer: the human brain sifts eleven million bits of sensory data each second but can process only forty. It chooses what it will notice and what it will ignore, constructing your entire reality from selective inputs. The key to a powerful life is learning how to override those autopilot shortcuts. By intentionally choosing a perspective where challenges become pathways, mundane routines become opportunities, and every setback points to growth, you transform your world from an unmovable hull to a vessel of possibility.

You begin by pausing when a stressor or frustration appears, then decide which details you’ll highlight—obstacles, data points, or new opportunities. Next, you step into someone else’s shoes for a moment, imagining how they’d interpret the same facts. Finally, you weigh each viewpoint, asking, “Which lens delivers positive growth and real-world truth?” Once you’ve picked the most empowering reality, that choice rewires your brain to focus on solutions, to surface hidden strengths, and to move ahead with energy and clarity.