One of the most humbling experiences I had as a teacher came years ago, when I realized something that seems obvious—but rarely lands until it’s felt:

Sometimes it is. But far more often than we think, it isn’t.

I learned this directly from my students. I’d be explaining a concept that felt crystal clear to me—simple, obvious, almost self-evident—and I’d watch blank stares come back at me. No resistance. No lack of intelligence. Just… no connection. That’s when it hit me: they weren’t seeing what I was seeing.

At the core of this is perception.

Let’s start with something visual. Think about a computer screen. A modern monitor can contain millions of pixels. Out of all those pixels, what’s the likelihood that you and I are truly seeing the exact same thing?

Statistically, it’s almost zero.

What actually happens is that your brain takes this overwhelming amount of raw data and organizes it into something that makes sense to you, based on your past experiences. It can’t possibly show you “the thing as it is.” So it deletes what it deems unimportant, distorts what doesn’t fit, and generalizes the rest into a usable image.

And somehow—miraculously—we still manage to communicate. Most of the time, it’s close enough.

Take this outside the controlled world of screens and classrooms, and things get much more interesting.

I love to go fishing in the jungle in Costa Rica with my friend Filemon. I would never—ever—go into that jungle alone. But with him, it’s safe enough.

Why?

Because Filemon can literally see things I cannot see.

When you go fishing with him, you don’t bring much—just some fishing line and a bit of wire. The rest, you gather along the way. As we hike toward the river, Filemon casually reaches into the grass and pulls out grasshoppers, one after another, dropping them into a bag.

I’m standing right there. I can’t see a single one of them.

Later, he’ll take a machete, find some bamboo, and make fishing poles on the spot. He’ll fashion hooks from wire. Along the way, he points out plants and animals—many times indicating something that is right in front of me that I simply cannot see.

This is exactly why I wouldn’t dare go alone. In that jungle, you could have a leopard nearby. Or worse, a terciopelo—one of the most dangerous venomous snakes in the world—lying almost invisibly close.

Filemon sees it all. It’s his domain.

At a deeper level, what you’re seeing is often shaped by patterns most people never recognize…

In the outside world, there are tens—if not hundreds—of millions of bits of information available at any moment. Filemon doesn’t see everything. He sees what he needs to see to stay safe… and maybe come home with some fish.  

The takeaway?

The world can look vastly different to the people around you. Further still, your mind handles all this for you automatically. Even further still, you may not even have choice about HOW it handles it for you.

Understanding this sits at the heart of the work I do. I don’t presume to know what someone else sees, believes, or experiences beyond a few basic human considerations. Instead, I accept their beliefs, values, and emotional world exactly as they are.

It’s only when those inner (and often automatic) patterns no longer serve the individual that I can be of real service.

That’s where purpose comes in—what I call your divinely inspired purpose. It’s the thing that genuinely energizes you. The thing you’re naturally drawn toward. The thing that feels meaningful, not forced. The thing you value the most for a given context.

And here’s where it gets even more fascinating.

You are walking around with one of the most sophisticated structures in nature: your nervous system. Inside it are roughly 86 billion neurons, each forming thousands of connections. The total number of synaptic connections — on the order of tens to hundreds of trillions — can exceed the number of stars in a typical galaxy like the Milky Way, highlighting the astounding complexity inside us all.

For all practical purposes, it might as well be infinite.

This incredible device produces behavior based on one thing: focus.

So the real question becomes:
What are you focusing on?

Most people think they’re focused on what they want. They have a positive thought here and there. But the average person thinks around ninety thousand thoughts a day. And much of that thinking happens unconsciously—on autopilot.

Ask someone what they were thinking about five minutes ago, precisely. Most people have no idea. And that’s normal.

But awareness changes everything.

Not by force. Not by struggle. Simply by paying attention.

What’s going on in your internal dialogue?
What pictures are you making in your mind?
What emotions are attached to them?
Is there laughter inside your head… or frustration… or worry?

This isn’t about judging it. It’s about noticing it.

When you begin to gently focus on what you actually want—and allow your unconscious mind to reorganize around that—the changes happen in ways that feel natural, often surprisingly easy.

Just like Filemon in the jungle, you begin to see what you couldn’t see before.

And once you see it, the world doesn’t look the same again.

This is the threshold of freedom and it’s what I help people to have.