39. Changing Your Business Lens
Recognizing our current belief systems and considering other options lies at the heart of the mindset work I do with my clients. Our beliefs, or lenses as I'm referring to them this week, impact the way we see the world and how we experience our businesses. The catch is that not all lenses serve us, and we need to be able to identify them so we can replace them with ones that do.
Whether or not you wear glasses in your everyday life, you know that they have the ability to make everything look crisp and clear or blurry and out of focus. Many designers fail to realize that the lenses they currently wear are optional. If your lenses are making your life and business more challenging than necessary, you might want to consider trying on a different pair.
Join me this week as I guide you in starting to identify the lenses you tend to wear and whether they truly serve you. You'll hear examples of how your current lenses might be manifesting in your life and business right now, and why exploring your lenses will leave you empowered and in control, rather than at the mercy of your business.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
What the concept of lenses means.
How the filtering system in our brain works.
What your lenses could look like.
How lenses impact your ability to problem-solve and pivot in your business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you are listening to episode 39. In this episode, we’re talking about a concept called lenses and how what pair you have on in your business impacts everything you do and the results you create.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m recording this post-Fourth of July. I know I talked about this a little bit last episode, but the lake that our cabin is on does a boat parade every year, and it’s getting more intense as the years go on. And I am happy to report that we were the winners this year. We won and I’m pretty excited about it. We put in so much effort into our pirate-themed pontoon boat.
We had a functioning cannon, which our friend made like a, I’d never heard of this but a potato or a spud gun. So it actually smoked, it was really cool. I made this fabric wrapping for the outside of the pontoon that looked like old wood. We had a plank for the kids to walk on and, of course, had to walk the plank. And then we made this treasure chest too that had pirate booty, which was really just beer and gold coins for the judges that we pulled up and let them pick what they wanted.
So it was super fun. We really went all out this year. And we’re very excited to win the trophy, which is essentially a small cooler that looks like a fishing bobber. I don’t know why we’ve gotten so into this, but we have. And it’s been really fun. And that means we get to judge next year and we, of course, are going to need to think about how we want to approach that and if we want to set up some kind of Tiki stand or something like that. I don’t know, we have a year to figure it out, so we’ll see.
I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July long weekend and are soaking up the sun of summertime. Today, what I want to talk about is this concept called lenses. Or another way you could look at that is belief systems that are impacting the actions you do or don’t take, which then directly impacts your results and how you experience your business and your clients, and pretty much everything you interact with, even yourself.
When I’m talking about lenses, I want you to picture an actual pair of lenses in glasses. Now, an actual pair of lenses in a pair of glasses that you’d be looking through. Sometimes these lenses are helpful and are serving you, and that’s terrific. But other times they’re holding you back or making things harder than they have to be. And often you don’t even realize that you could just remove the lens.
This is exactly what we’re going to be talking about today, is identifying what lenses you’re possibly wearing and then decide whether or not you want to switch them out because it’s optional, because that is completely a choice available to you. And I want to make sure that that is abundantly clear by the end of this episode.
Before we dive in, I want to ask a favor of you. If you’ve been loving the show, which I’ve been hearing from so many of you, could you please take a moment to rate and review the show? This means so much to me. It’s so encouraging to hear what you’re loving about the show. And it’s also how other designers can find the podcast. It really makes a difference if you leave a rating and review in how readily the show appears in someone’s searches.
It really only takes a minute. All you have to do is scroll down in your podcast app, tap the five stars and then leave me a quick review. Just a couple of sentences will do. You could tell me what you’re loving, what you’re looking forward to or why another designer should definitely tune in.
Let’s get started with talking about those lenses. The reason that I wanted to bring this to the podcast today is often I’ll see a problem or a certain situation that a client will keep bumping up against and it’s likely then because of a lens that they’re looking through and they haven’t realized it’s a lens and they haven’t actively switched the lens out.
As I said before, I want you to really picture putting on a pair of glasses. Slipping them on over your ears, the bridge of the nose and there are lenses in the glasses that you are looking through. These lenses impact the way that you see the world. These lenses might make everything more crisp and clear, or things might become blurry and you end up with a massive headache from having those lenses on.
Whether or not you actually wear glasses, you are viewing your world, your business, your clients, your employees, everything, even yourself through a lens. And whatever lens you’re looking through will directly impact your feelings, actions and result. This is the self-coaching model that I teach my clients, and if you want to hear more about that, check out episode three.
The reason why this concept of lenses is so powerful is because of what’s actually happening in your brain because of something called the reticular activating system or the RAS. Now, we’re going to briefly nerd out so you’ll understand what’s going on behind the scenes with that complex brain of yours.
We have so much input to sort through at any given moment, I think we can all agree on that. And so the brain has developed a way to organize information so that you don’t overload and have a meltdown. Although sometimes that still happens, right? But the reticular activating system, the RAS, helps with this.
Essentially, the RAS is a bundle of nerves at your brainstem that filters out unnecessary information so the important stuff gets through and the rest gets kind of filtered out. A great example of this in action is when you’re in a noisy crowd and someone yells your name, how it catches your attention. Your brain knows that your name is an important piece of information and so it’s on the lookout for it.
Another example of this is when you get a new car that you think many people don’t really drive, and yet once you buy the car, now you see the car everywhere. The RAS is happening automatically without you noticing, which can be very handy unless you’re filtering for information or evidence that’s holding you back.
It’s really important to know that the RAS is going to seek information that validates your current belief or your current lens. For example, if you think you’re bad at public speaking, the RAS will seek information to validate this belief. It’s going to be very likely to notice when you stumbled a bit on your words at a committee meeting at school, and then it will completely dismiss the many times you confidently shared your viewpoint somewhere else.
The RAS filters what you see through what I’m calling lenses, which in turn influences your actions and results. Another key piece here to remember is that while the RAS is running automatically, with awareness and attention you get to decide what it pays attention to and what it deems important. This is where coaching comes in.
Some of these lenses that we have are working great for you. And some are not. We need to know which are working and which are not. Lenses are going to show up everywhere and I want to give you some examples of what lenses could look like so you can start to identify what you’re looking through and what your RAS is looking for.
A big one I want you to think about is do you have a lens that things are going well or working for you in your business? Or are you looking through a fixing lens where it’s highlighting everything that needs to be fixed or isn’t measuring up? Or possibly do you have a lens that certain tasks are just hard or difficult or take a long time for you? Possibly would you want to consider an easy lens? A lens that highlights the simple and easy solution.
Or perhaps you have a lens that clients or even specific clients, you know that one, are difficult to work with. Maybe you’d want to consider a lens that everyone is on the same team and wants the best outcome for all. The last one I want you to consider is do you have a lens that your days are chaotic or that you’re all over the place? Or do you have a lens that is looking for the ways that you have things under control?
By sharing a variety of examples, I want you to see that you are always looking through a lens and start to identify what lenses you tend to have on. The other thing I really want to highlight is how lenses impact your ability to problem solve and pivot in your business. Let’s say you had a few proposals in a row that have not been signed, this could be considered a problem.
And if you have a money lens that says you are too expensive or clients aren’t investing right now or maybe your work isn’t valued, the solutions to your potential problem are going to be limited by that current lens, meaning the solutions you come up with are likely going to be around pricing. If you’re using this lens of I’m too expensive, clients won’t pay that, you might be only thinking of solutions such as lowering your fees or offering less expensive services.
And what you’ll miss out on is all of the possible solutions available to you through an alternative lens. If you were to take off the money lens you might consider are these clients even my ideal clients? If they’re not, why might that be? Do I need to get new eyes on my business through my marketing? Is the copy on my website sending the wrong message?
Are there new relationships that I need to develop? Or maybe it’s that your proposals are not clear and simple to understand, maybe they’re too complicated. Or maybe you’re leaving clients to sort through all the numbers and fine print on their own, versus guiding them through the process. Or it could even be that because you’re so swamped, it’s taking you quite a while to get back to clients with their proposal. And it’s taking so long that they start to think you don’t want the job and move on.
If you’re only focused on the money lens, you’re going to miss all of these other possible solutions to the challenge you’re facing. Your lenses are going to limit what you see, and then also they’re going to reinforce your current beliefs, which then will perpetuate the results that you have, whether you like them or not.
So I encourage you to take a look at what lenses you’re looking through and name them. Just like I did in that example the money lens, or the insecure lens or the conflict lens. Decide if you want to keep these lenses or if you want to set them aside because that’s always an option.
Considering lenses can be also really helpful when you’re interacting with others. Whether that’s a client, a contractor, employee, or even a family member. You, of course, are bringing a lens to that interaction, but they’re also bringing a lens as well. So it can be helpful to think about what lens are they bringing in? Is it the same lens as yours or is it possibly different? Would it be helpful for you to look through their lens, if it is different, and see where they’re coming from?
Recognizing current lenses and considering other options really is at the heart of the mindset work I teach my clients to do. You start to see that you have options and you’re empowered, and you begin to be the cause of your results versus always being at the effect. When you change your lens, you truly can change your outcome.
So, today I want you to consider what lenses you’re wearing, if they’re helpful or not. And if not, are you ready to change what you’re expecting to be true? That is what I have for you today. The next episode is going to be a very special one. My birthday is right around the corner and I’ve been reflecting on the past year.
Next week, I’m going to be sharing some of these lessons learned and how they can apply to your own life and business. I’m also going to share more on these lessons in my weekly email called Monday Mindset. This is a quick note from me to you that I send out without fail every Monday morning to set the tone for your week.
Click the link in the show notes to add your name to the list so you can get the full behind the scenes on my birthday lessons. I really am looking forward to having this reflective, intimate conversation with you. And until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m recording this post-Fourth of July. I know I talked about this a little bit last episode, but the lake that our cabin is on does a boat parade every year, and it’s getting more intense as the years go on. And I am happy to report that we were the winners this year. We won and I’m pretty excited about it. We put in so much effort into our pirate-themed pontoon boat.
We had a functioning cannon, which our friend made like a, I’d never heard of this but a potato or a spud gun. So it actually smoked, it was really cool. I made this fabric wrapping for the outside of the pontoon that looked like old wood. We had a plank for the kids to walk on and, of course, had to walk the plank. And then we made this treasure chest too that had pirate booty, which was really just beer and gold coins for the judges that we pulled up and let them pick what they wanted.
So it was super fun. We really went all out this year. And we’re very excited to win the trophy, which is essentially a small cooler that looks like a fishing bobber. I don’t know why we’ve gotten so into this, but we have. And it’s been really fun. And that means we get to judge next year and we, of course, are going to need to think about how we want to approach that and if we want to set up some kind of Tiki stand or something like that. I don’t know, we have a year to figure it out, so we’ll see.
I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July long weekend and are soaking up the sun of summertime. Today, what I want to talk about is this concept called lenses. Or another way you could look at that is belief systems that are impacting the actions you do or don’t take, which then directly impacts your results and how you experience your business and your clients, and pretty much everything you interact with, even yourself.
When I’m talking about lenses, I want you to picture an actual pair of lenses in glasses. Now, an actual pair of lenses in a pair of glasses that you’d be looking through. Sometimes these lenses are helpful and are serving you, and that’s terrific. But other times they’re holding you back or making things harder than they have to be. And often you don’t even realize that you could just remove the lens.
This is exactly what we’re going to be talking about today, is identifying what lenses you’re possibly wearing and then decide whether or not you want to switch them out because it’s optional, because that is completely a choice available to you. And I want to make sure that that is abundantly clear by the end of this episode.
Before we dive in, I want to ask a favor of you. If you’ve been loving the show, which I’ve been hearing from so many of you, could you please take a moment to rate and review the show? This means so much to me. It’s so encouraging to hear what you’re loving about the show. And it’s also how other designers can find the podcast. It really makes a difference if you leave a rating and review in how readily the show appears in someone’s searches.
It really only takes a minute. All you have to do is scroll down in your podcast app, tap the five stars and then leave me a quick review. Just a couple of sentences will do. You could tell me what you’re loving, what you’re looking forward to or why another designer should definitely tune in.
Let’s get started with talking about those lenses. The reason that I wanted to bring this to the podcast today is often I’ll see a problem or a certain situation that a client will keep bumping up against and it’s likely then because of a lens that they’re looking through and they haven’t realized it’s a lens and they haven’t actively switched the lens out.
As I said before, I want you to really picture putting on a pair of glasses. Slipping them on over your ears, the bridge of the nose and there are lenses in the glasses that you are looking through. These lenses impact the way that you see the world. These lenses might make everything more crisp and clear, or things might become blurry and you end up with a massive headache from having those lenses on.
Whether or not you actually wear glasses, you are viewing your world, your business, your clients, your employees, everything, even yourself through a lens. And whatever lens you’re looking through will directly impact your feelings, actions and result. This is the self-coaching model that I teach my clients, and if you want to hear more about that, check out episode three.
The reason why this concept of lenses is so powerful is because of what’s actually happening in your brain because of something called the reticular activating system or the RAS. Now, we’re going to briefly nerd out so you’ll understand what’s going on behind the scenes with that complex brain of yours.
We have so much input to sort through at any given moment, I think we can all agree on that. And so the brain has developed a way to organize information so that you don’t overload and have a meltdown. Although sometimes that still happens, right? But the reticular activating system, the RAS, helps with this.
Essentially, the RAS is a bundle of nerves at your brainstem that filters out unnecessary information so the important stuff gets through and the rest gets kind of filtered out. A great example of this in action is when you’re in a noisy crowd and someone yells your name, how it catches your attention. Your brain knows that your name is an important piece of information and so it’s on the lookout for it.
Another example of this is when you get a new car that you think many people don’t really drive, and yet once you buy the car, now you see the car everywhere. The RAS is happening automatically without you noticing, which can be very handy unless you’re filtering for information or evidence that’s holding you back.
It’s really important to know that the RAS is going to seek information that validates your current belief or your current lens. For example, if you think you’re bad at public speaking, the RAS will seek information to validate this belief. It’s going to be very likely to notice when you stumbled a bit on your words at a committee meeting at school, and then it will completely dismiss the many times you confidently shared your viewpoint somewhere else.
The RAS filters what you see through what I’m calling lenses, which in turn influences your actions and results. Another key piece here to remember is that while the RAS is running automatically, with awareness and attention you get to decide what it pays attention to and what it deems important. This is where coaching comes in.
Some of these lenses that we have are working great for you. And some are not. We need to know which are working and which are not. Lenses are going to show up everywhere and I want to give you some examples of what lenses could look like so you can start to identify what you’re looking through and what your RAS is looking for.
A big one I want you to think about is do you have a lens that things are going well or working for you in your business? Or are you looking through a fixing lens where it’s highlighting everything that needs to be fixed or isn’t measuring up? Or possibly do you have a lens that certain tasks are just hard or difficult or take a long time for you? Possibly would you want to consider an easy lens? A lens that highlights the simple and easy solution.
Or perhaps you have a lens that clients or even specific clients, you know that one, are difficult to work with. Maybe you’d want to consider a lens that everyone is on the same team and wants the best outcome for all. The last one I want you to consider is do you have a lens that your days are chaotic or that you’re all over the place? Or do you have a lens that is looking for the ways that you have things under control?
By sharing a variety of examples, I want you to see that you are always looking through a lens and start to identify what lenses you tend to have on. The other thing I really want to highlight is how lenses impact your ability to problem solve and pivot in your business. Let’s say you had a few proposals in a row that have not been signed, this could be considered a problem.
And if you have a money lens that says you are too expensive or clients aren’t investing right now or maybe your work isn’t valued, the solutions to your potential problem are going to be limited by that current lens, meaning the solutions you come up with are likely going to be around pricing. If you’re using this lens of I’m too expensive, clients won’t pay that, you might be only thinking of solutions such as lowering your fees or offering less expensive services.
And what you’ll miss out on is all of the possible solutions available to you through an alternative lens. If you were to take off the money lens you might consider are these clients even my ideal clients? If they’re not, why might that be? Do I need to get new eyes on my business through my marketing? Is the copy on my website sending the wrong message?
Are there new relationships that I need to develop? Or maybe it’s that your proposals are not clear and simple to understand, maybe they’re too complicated. Or maybe you’re leaving clients to sort through all the numbers and fine print on their own, versus guiding them through the process. Or it could even be that because you’re so swamped, it’s taking you quite a while to get back to clients with their proposal. And it’s taking so long that they start to think you don’t want the job and move on.
If you’re only focused on the money lens, you’re going to miss all of these other possible solutions to the challenge you’re facing. Your lenses are going to limit what you see, and then also they’re going to reinforce your current beliefs, which then will perpetuate the results that you have, whether you like them or not.
So I encourage you to take a look at what lenses you’re looking through and name them. Just like I did in that example the money lens, or the insecure lens or the conflict lens. Decide if you want to keep these lenses or if you want to set them aside because that’s always an option.
Considering lenses can be also really helpful when you’re interacting with others. Whether that’s a client, a contractor, employee, or even a family member. You, of course, are bringing a lens to that interaction, but they’re also bringing a lens as well. So it can be helpful to think about what lens are they bringing in? Is it the same lens as yours or is it possibly different? Would it be helpful for you to look through their lens, if it is different, and see where they’re coming from?
Recognizing current lenses and considering other options really is at the heart of the mindset work I teach my clients to do. You start to see that you have options and you’re empowered, and you begin to be the cause of your results versus always being at the effect. When you change your lens, you truly can change your outcome.
So, today I want you to consider what lenses you’re wearing, if they’re helpful or not. And if not, are you ready to change what you’re expecting to be true? That is what I have for you today. The next episode is going to be a very special one. My birthday is right around the corner and I’ve been reflecting on the past year.
Next week, I’m going to be sharing some of these lessons learned and how they can apply to your own life and business. I’m also going to share more on these lessons in my weekly email called Monday Mindset. This is a quick note from me to you that I send out without fail every Monday morning to set the tone for your week.
Click the link in the show notes to add your name to the list so you can get the full behind the scenes on my birthday lessons. I really am looking forward to having this reflective, intimate conversation with you. And until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
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