 A number of years ago I was traveling to a conference with a colleague of mine and as we were on the road there she kept commenting about the beautiful foliage, it was fall and the leaves were changing color and she was just really excited about that and interested in the fall foliage and kept pointing things out and oh do you see this and that and eventually she was she was a little bit mortified when I explained to her that I was color blind and I hadn't wanted to say it now I really don't see the different foliage that you're seeing that it's just kind of different shades of green to me but but and she was just really taken aback by that never having considered that maybe I wasn't seeing the same thing she wasn't totally not her fault that was she had no idea no way of knowing that that would be the case but still kind of a funny story that we talk about up to this day really just a great way to illustrate though that people see things differently people approach things with different perspectives it's really something that connects very deeply to what we call frame of reference which is what I'd like to speak to you about in this video or frame of reference in the way that affects our communication so to define frame of reference first it's the collection of beliefs values knowledge experiences cultures and other factors used to filter perceptions and create a unique understanding of a situation or stimuli now that's a mouthful right that's a mouthful but it's basically everything that makes us who we are goes into what we call our frame of reference sort of this filter between between how we experience the world and our own brain and the way that we interpret these things the way that we understand things in communication in general so if we look at the broader you know model of communication in general this would fall into sort of in that context area where you know our frame of reference affects every other aspect of communication so it really is affected by by the context of things and by who specifically you're speaking with or if we looked at something like listening in particular we see frame of reference show up down at the bottom there where all those things factor into how we go about hearing something how we understand something how we interpret things how we remember things are all impacted by the the factors that would make up our frame of reference so frame of reference affects every aspect of communication so let me give you just a quick illustration here let's say that we have a gentleman who's walking down the street just walking on the street mind of his own business and then running down the street in the opposite direction this this person sees a dog now when this happens they're gonna you know see the stimuli we know this from perception right they're gonna they're gonna select the stimuli we're gonna see that animal running toward them see the dog running toward them they're going to organize that into this is a dog and and then they're gonna start to interpret though they're gonna it's gonna pass through that filter that I mentioned before which is our frame of reference right so everything every every person has an absolutely unique filter frame of reference and in that filter that filters made up of all those things we talked about your beliefs your culture your values your knowledge your experience your education your your everything that makes you who you are is in that filter and so everything that we process is gonna go through that that's gonna be unique for every single person no two people of the exact same collection of those things so so when this guy is walking down the street he sees his dog running at him and they pass us through that filter if he's had like some bad experiences with dogs in the past and he's growing up he got bit by a dog and he has this kind of fear of dogs then he's gonna be kind of you don't have these fearful emotions probably or be like keep that dog away from me I don't want anything to do with it he's gonna be anxious maybe about the dog running up toward him or if he's somebody who's had really positive experiences with dogs and is a dog person then he's gonna be like oh my gosh that is a really beautiful dog I want to pet that dog I hope it runs up toward me and I can greet this dog and you know two very different things and maybe any range of emotions in between there maybe you're not a dog person you're not necessarily afraid of dogs you just don't care about dogs you're just gonna kind of ignore it probably right every person is gonna react differently in that situation because of that frame of reference they're going to be affected differently by that it's sort of like we all have different glasses on if we all have different glass we all have different views of the world through that because of the different glasses that we're wearing we all see the world through a slightly different lens and slightly different perspective because of that so frame of reference affects every aspect of communication it's one of the reasons that you know somebody could say something and you hear something totally different or have a different understanding of things it's a reason that people understand end up on two different pages with different things you know whether it's political beliefs or religious beliefs or whatever all that passes through the frame of reference and gives us a totally unique understanding of whatever it is we're experiencing culture impacts us strongly of course when you look at somebody from different culture that is deeply ingrained in their frame of reference and affects that and as I mentioned before it affects listening as well we all hear things differently and interpret things differently in the listening process because of frame of reference we're hearing it's passing through that filter for us a little bit differently so the most important thing for us to understand with frame of reference is that in general in life think of it as looking you know if we come up on a door we come up on a door it's totally blocked off but there's a keyhole we look through that keyhole we're going to see a a particular perspective right we're going to see something specific that's going to be our frame of reference our frame of reference is limited by our beliefs our values our experiences and so forth but what we want to do is if if not expand our frame of reference we at least want to expand our understanding of you know what is possible so we may look through this keyhole and just see the tree on the other side right we think about this perceptively we just see this tree but what we may be missing is the rest of the vista that if we're only looking through that keyhole so we've got to be able to to say okay this is what I'm seeing but it's possible that other people are experiencing this differently and seeing it differently and that doesn't mean we have to agree with them or validate what they're saying but we need to at least understand how they might be coming to that differently because they have a different frame of reference related to whatever it is we're communicating about I hope this helps you understand frame of reference a little bit better if you have questions about any of that please feel free to email me I'd be happy to to share more with you on the topic via email so let me know otherwise I hope this again has enhanced your understanding a frame of reference and allowed you to see things a little bit differently and at least understand how other people may be seeing things a little bit differently because of their unique frame of reference