changing my lens, a talk with emma

That is like an Arby's curly fry for the brain, that is like an everything bagel for the brain. That is like a scoop of mint, chocolate chip, ice cream, a little bit melted. It's not like super hard, like you can easily get your spoon into it for the brain.

Yum, a metaphor? Yum, okay, yummy, yum.

Okay, yum. And my favorite metaphor this week is the lens that we view life through the lens. obviously we're not actually looking through a lens at life.

I mean, we're looking through our eyes, which kind of have lenses in them in one way or another. But today we're going to be discussing the metaphorical lens that we use to view life through. When I say lens, I'm referring to the perspective that we live our lives by, our attitude towards life, our general point of view towards life. I am loving this metaphor right now because it's something I'm really working on. I think it's something I will work on for the rest of my life.

Making sure that I'm looking through life as a whole, but also individual situations through the proper lens, through the best lens possible. And I know that this shit might sound obvious, like, Yeah, Emma. We need to look at life through a positive lens. Yes, Emma, we need to look at life through an accurate lens. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's important. Yes, I know it is obvious, and I know it is important. However, as with most obvious things, they can sneakily fall out of our control and, if not properly maintained, they can deviously ruin our quality of life. I recently realized that I was looking at a ton of things through the wrong lens and it was making my life worse.

There's a lot of talk about how we create our own universe, our perspective, the way that we choose to see the world. The way that we choose to see others is our own creation, in our imagination, in our brains. And I think it's really true. And I've had a few moments recently where I suddenly realized that I had been looking at certain situations in my life through the wrong lens. For example, I've hated Los Angeles since I moved here, pretty much, I moved here when I was 17..

I'm 22 now and for the last five years, anytime anyone would ask me, Emma, do you like living in Los Angeles? I'd say no. This is the worst place in the fucking world. I hate it. I am having a hard time finding people that I like.

It's kind of dirty and gross sometimes, I don't feel safe a lot. Everyone here is fake. I wish I could walk to a coffee shop, but you have to drive everywhere.

Basically, being a negative little brat. Okay, I've been a negative little brat about L.A. Pretty much since I've moved here. But recently, recently, I have fallen in love with Los Angeles. I love this place.

What the fuck was wrong with me? I love it here. No, I had it all wrong. It dawned on me one day when I was on a little walk. It was warm and the breeze was flowing through my hair and I heard the birds chirping. And then, soon after that, I got into my car to go run errands.

And again, I rolled the windows down and the breeze was flowing through my hair, and I was listening to music and the sun was shining. And I was like, I love it here. And, you know, I was driving through the same streets that I once hated, now feeling pure bliss and gratitude. And the only thing that changed was the lens that I was looking at Los Angeles through, I was looking at L.A. through a hateful lens. Only choosing to see the negative sides of it and not taking any accountability at all for the role that I was playing and why it sucks for me.

Okay, for one. I was hanging out with a tiny community in Los Angeles. I moved here, and the only people I knew to hang out with were other people in my industry. Okay, other YouTubers, other Instagrammers, other podcasters, whatever.

Only hanging out with people in my industry, I was also living in an area that did not suit me. I like a bit of a quieter, more relaxed home environment. And I was choosing to live in the center of Los Angeles, like in the thick of it, in the middle of everything. And then I was complaining when chaos would ensue, because, yeah, it's like I live on a main street in Los Angeles.

Of course, chaos is going to ensue. There are other areas to live in, L.A. I'm choosing to live in the thick of it. That's my fault. If I'm overwhelmed by it or I feel suffocated by it, that is my fault.

I was also hanging around people who frankly hated L.A. even more than I did, and that didn't help either. Because people rub off on you. And so if everyone around me is like, Oh, doesn't L.A. suck, L.A. sucks, I hate it here.

This place fucking sucks, it sucks. It's like, Okay, well, now I think it sucks, too. When you hear something enough, it becomes, unfortunately, sometimes your own belief. But a few things happened that really changed my lens.

For one, I moved out of the center of L.A. Now I live in a slightly quieter area. Wow, that changed everything. That was number one, number two. I started hanging out around people who love L.A. who appreciate L.A. for what it is. See it through a positive lens.

Naturally, they just naturally see Los Angeles through a positive lens. They're aware of the flaws, because, don't get me wrong, there are flaws, but they love it for what it is. I started hanging out around people like that who have a positive lens about L.A. Yes, but also about life in general. That helped me across the board, but it really helped me when it came to my relationship with Los Angeles.

And I've also branched out and started meeting people who aren't in my industry, aren't in my little bubble, not even necessarily in deeply friendly ways. But I've just started to pay attention more to random people that I meet at the grocery store. You know what I mean, and there's good people around, there really are good people around.

I have heartfelt, cute experiences on a weekly basis here in Los Angeles, when I pay attention, whether it's someone opening the door for me or it's someone complimenting my shoes. Through a series of events, my lens towards Los Angeles has shifted now. It wasn't an active shift, I didn't make a choice to shift my lens. It just happened naturally. But I wish that I would have taken action sooner and shifted it myself because I really do love it here.

And now that my lens is more positive about L.A. I'm seeing so much more of its greatness. Do you get what I mean? When I saw L.A. through a negative lens, I was just seeing all the negative shit about it. And that was so vivid to me in my lens that I couldn't see any of the positive stuff that was happening in the peripheral, that was blurred out in my old lens.

Now, because my lens is positive, yeah, I'm still aware of the bullshit that goes on here, whether it's fake vibes every once in a while or pretentious vibes sometimes. I mean, that's mainly just in the industry that I'm in, but it's actually not. It kind of goes beyond that. It's sort of the culture here, but to an extent it's stereotypical, but it does exist in a way.

Anyway, that still exists. It's still a mess of a city, it's a big city, it's a mess sometimes.

It's scary, it feels dangerous, you're scared, whatever. All of that still exists, but I love it here.

Now I see it through a positive lens. I see all of the beauty that it has to offer and all of the fun that it has to offer. It's amazing. For so long, I wanted to move to New York.

I was like, New York is better for me, I feel like there's a better social scene for me, maybe the values seem to be better there. People are more down to earth, you can walk everywhere, but I also know myself.

I think the reason why I never moved to New York was because I don't think it would have been good for me. I would have been far away from my family, I wouldn't have had the freedom of being able to drive my car anywhere I want to go. I love nature and it's very hard to access nature in New York. I love peace and quiet and calmness.

That's not happening in New York. I don't think it would have been good for me. Ultimately, I romanticized it. I saw New York through this delusionally dream-like lens, and that was not accurate either. That wasn't even a positive lens because I was looking at New York in a positive lens, only because I was looking at L.A. in a negative lens. If that makes sense.

Now that I see L.A. through a positive lens, I see New York through a more realistic lens. I love New York, but New York is much less appealing to me. When I'm not trying to run away from something that I think that I hate. Does that make sense when you're looking at something from a naively negative lens? Like you haven't seen enough or experienced enough to form a proper opinion, you can end up taking something good for granted. That is what I did with Los Angeles.

I had a few bad experiences when I first moved here and I didn't get into the swing of things. Very quickly. I decided, You know what, I don't like, L.A. That is my opinion and it's not going to change. I have made up my mind.

This is my lens, it is permanent and no one can change my mind. That was really harmful because I was taking Los Angeles for granted all this time, when my quality of life could have been better all this time. If I had just said, You know what? Maybe that's not the right lens I should be looking at L.A. through. Let me try a more positive one and see how I feel about L.A.

Then, maybe then I will still want to leave Los Angeles, but I can't be sure until I look at it through the most positive lens that I can. Another lens that I, unknowingly and unfortunately adopted, was looking at life through a fear of failure. Now it's hypocritical of me because I'm the first one to say failure is great, failure is crucial.

We must fail on the journey to success. Now. When I say success, I don't mean lots of money or lots of fame. no success being defined by you personally. What does success mean to you?

Is that being happy? Well, that's complicated, but does it mean being fulfilled creatively? does it mean having a lot of free time? Whatever success means for you, that is almost always reached through a series of failures along the way, failure is crucial.

We shouldn't fear failure. I know this in my conscious brain, but without even realizing it, for many years, I was looking at life fearing failure subconsciously. That was my lens, and that reared its ugly head in many areas of my life, without me even realizing it at the time. For example, on a personal level, I've stayed in many relationships and even friendships for too long. Because subconsciously, I felt like ending them was some sort of failure. If the relationship failed, then in some way, as a human being, I have failed.

I dragged things on for too long, knowing deep down that it was going to have to end eventually. Just because I didn't want to fail, it was a blow to my ego a little bit. If it failed, all of this was happening subconsciously, I had no idea that it was happening.

Now I'm able to look back and see it clearly. But at the time, I couldn't quite figure out why I wasn't walking away because I knew it was not working for me anymore. But every single relationship, platonic or romantic, that I've stayed in for too long. It's been because of my little subconscious fear of failure. It's been because of the lens that I was looking at relationships through. I wasn't looking through the lens of success because the lens of success would have showed me that these relationships weren't working. I would have said to myself, Okay, well, if I want to find success in relationships, then I need to end these so I can make room for new, amazing, fruitful friendships and relationships.

Do you see what I'm saying? And even with work or creative endeavors, I've beaten a dead horse, if you will, on certain projects or endeavors. Deep down, knowing that they're not working, because giving up on them would be a failure. A small example would be Sometimes I sit down to record a podcast and I start talking and it's just not flowing, it's just not happening. Instead of stopping and pivoting and being like, you know what, I'm just going to do a different topic today.

I'm just going to come up with something else, and yeah, you know, it might take me a while to come up with something new. And yeah, it's kind of a bummer. To scrap an idea and best case scenario, save it for another day, but the day will probably never come that I want to give it another try. So it'll probably just end up going in the can and never will be used.

And all the time that I spent coming up with the idea was wasted and that sucks. But I know that I should probably just pivot now and not beat a dead horse, like, just get rid of this and pivot. I will torture myself and try to make the original idea work, even though it's not working just because scrapping an episode is failing. You know what I mean?

That's failure to me, not as much anymore. I'm speaking about that in the present tense, but it's not as much present tense for me. That was something that was challenging for me a while back, far less now, but that's a great example.

This has happened to me with YouTube, this has happened to me with everything, everything. In my career. I've had this challenge where I've taken a project or an endeavor that isn't working. And I've tried a little bit too long to make it work. Instead of pivoting and trying something else, out of fear of failure, you know, I don't want to give it up because then I failed at that and I didn't give it my all. But the problem is, if you're looking at life through a lens that fears failure, then, ironically, you're preventing success.

When you're wasting time on stuff that's not working, you're not spending time working on the next thing that could work. You see what I mean for this one, I almost have to close my eyes and think about if I actually was looking at life through these metaphorical lenses. And I think about looking through a failure lens, like avoiding failure lens, and when I think about looking through that lens, it's like everything lights up as red. Like caution, because with every endeavor, there's an opportunity for failure.

It's a very chaotic, stressful lens. When I think about looking through that lens, I see bright red flashing lights saying about to fail, about to fail, about to fail. When something's not working, and it's chaotic, and it's stressful. And it's upsetting when I think about looking through a success lens. Like, Oh, we're striving for success, whatever that may mean to us personally, I think of a bright green, blue, orangey like, light and flowy lens. Okay?

I close my eyes and I think about a project that's not working and what's showing up in the lens? Beautiful clouds that spell out, Hey, maybe you should try something else, you see what I'm saying? This is why the lens metaphor is so powerful for me, because when I think of these things, I don't know. It gives me a visual that I can remember in times when I know my lens is off.

I don't know, maybe that only works for me, and if it does, then that is super embarrassing and I shouldn't have shared that with you. But those are two major examples of lens shifts that have happened in my life relatively recently, but there have been many more, many more. Because, honestly, we have to be checking up on our lenses all the time. It's not like we just have one lens that we see all of life through. We have a bunch of little, tiny lenses that we look at every unique situation through. And that requires constant upkeep.

But I would say there are three main things in my experience that impact your lenses that are important to pay attention to. Like, I pay attention to these things in order to keep my lenses in check. Number one, how my ego impacts my lens. If I have a few personal experiences that create a certain narrative in my head, that creates a pretty solid lens. And my ego can sometimes come in and make me stubborn about altering it. Because we all want to feel right about our opinions and about the way that we see the world, and it's hard to shake that sometimes.

But whenever we find that we've gotten stuck with a lens rooted in our narrow experiences in life. We must remind ourselves that there is more to life than our own personal experiences and beliefs. And it's much healthier to have an open-minded, more fluid lens, rather than a stubborn, naive one. I think any lens that is rooted in ego in some way is going to be inaccurate, and that's the problem. It's going to be inaccurate in one extreme or in the other. Usually because it's based on our own personal experiences and not based on the experiences of the world around us.

Does that make sense? Like? I think a great example of this would be my feelings towards Los Angeles. I had my experiences when I first moved to L.A. and I hung out with people that felt a certain type of way about LA. And my lens was screwed into my head, and it took a whole lot of metaphorical unscrewing to change the lens. Because I was very wrapped up in my ego with that one, for whatever reason. Well, I had my own experiences and I was convinced that that was just the truth. You know what I mean?

And I wanted to be right, so I didn't want to change my opinion. And it felt embarrassing almost to go back on my word and say, actually, I kind of like L.A. Now, your lens can change and evolve over time as you have more life experiences.

Other people share their life experiences with you, you hear stories in the news about other experiences over here. So that over time, you can build an accurate lens, not an egotistical lens. An egotistical lens will never be accurate. And I think that the right lens tends to be a primarily positive lens that is not delusionally positive.

It's a positive lens that strives to see the best in things, while still being very aware of the flaws. I think that that is the ideal balanced, healthy lens in all categories of life. If there needed to be a formula, I would say that would be the formula. Next, the people around you impact your lens, people rub off on you.

As I was saying earlier, the shit that people say seeps into your subconscious and can sometimes, arguably a lot of the times, become your own truth. Without you even realizing that it's happening. So if the people around you have a shitty lens, I can almost guarantee your lens will begin to suck too. But on the other hand, if their lens is great, chances are yours is going to become great. I have had certain friends or partners in my life who have had a horrific lens just in general about life, just a horrible fucking lens. And it is not a coincidence that I've had some of my darkest hours in their company because their lens became mine.

And you know, I would love to believe that my lens is strong and positive enough to rub off on other people. But sometimes, sometimes that's wishful thinking. And their lens rubs off on you, their lens becomes yours, and you start to see the world through their lens. I've mainly found that in romantic relationships, like when you're dating somebody, you're so close to them that you do start to see the world through their lens. And vice versa.

Now, depending on who your partner is and what their lens is like, that can be great, that can be amazing, that can make life even better. But if it's the wrong person, maybe it's a negative person, maybe it's somebody who hasn't been checking up on their lenses.

Holy shit, can it be dark? It can be really dark, really quick. If you're dating someone who hates the world, hates everyone, hates where you live, hates all the music that comes out, hates all the clothes that people wear, hates everything. You're gonna start hating everything. It's just important to pay attention to the lenses that the people you hold close have screwed on because that shit rubs off on you.

You also rub off on them, but I don't know, it goes both ways. And so if you have your lenses all screwed on, right, and you picked out all the right ones and you're doing great. And then you go and start hanging out with somebody who doesn't have their shit together like that, it could either be beneficial for the both of you or harmful for you, but it's just important to pay attention to it. Because I can't tell you how many times I've fallen into a dark place because of the people around me and their horrific lenses. And, last but not least, similar to how the people you hang out with impact you what you consume impacts your lens.

You really are what you consume, and I know this, oh, I know this, because it's so vivid. When shifts happen, like, for example, if I'm reading a certain type of book, the tone, the feeling of that book will shift. The lens that I see the world through, like if the book is scary suddenly, I'm a little bit scared when I turn all my lights out at night and I see the world through a spooky lens. When I'm reading a wholesome book where there's, you know, a lot of love and all this, I see the world through a loving lens.

I'm like, Oh my God, I love my mom and my dad, I love my and I love my boyfriend, or I love my best friends. Or I love my dog. Oh, I don't have a dog, I love my cats and I like, you know what I mean?

All of a sudden, I like, love everyone, and I'm like, crying and I love everyone. When I'm reading, you know, a book about a natural disaster, all I can think about is natural disasters. I'm walking outside, like, Oh my God, is there going to be a fucking tornado today? Like, you start to see the world through that lens, what you consume on social media, on TV, on YouTube, in books, all of this impacts your lens.

I think what's beautiful about this, though, is that when it's something that you're vividly, vividly, very consciously aware of, it's kind of a fun thing. That you can control in a way like you are in control of your lenses. You choose who you hang out with, and you can choose to hang out with people who have phenomenal lenses. Now, all of a sudden, you have phenomenal lenses.

You can choose what type of entertainment you choose to consume, you can play around and experiment and see how this type of book or this type of movie makes you feel. And if those types of things make you feel good and screw on a good lens for you, lean into that, you can make conscious decisions to change your lens. Say, you know what? I'm going to try to see this area of my life through a more positive lens and see what happens.

I'm going to try to see the good in this area of my life and see what happens. I'm still going to be aware of the bad, but I'm just going to try. And it's crazy how that decision can change your lens. Sometimes your lenses shift as life shifts. I feel like that happened to me with L.A. Like, I just made new friends, moved to a different area. And next thing I knew, I was like, wait a minute, this place is kind of great.

I actually don't hate it. That can happen, too, but I'm realizing that it is somewhat of a superpower to be aware of all of these things. So that I can just make the world a better, brighter place through my eyes, that's something that I can control, I can't control what happens to me in my life. Shitty stuff happens sometimes.

I'm very fortunate, but still, shitty stuff happens to me, it happens to everyone. Having a positive lens is not going to change that. That's something that I must clarify. It's not like.

Looking at life through good lenses means that there are no struggles, there are no challenges, there are no bad things. But instead, it's screwing on the right lens so that you see the right things, you see the opportunities. I don't know.

I'm fucking just talking myself into oblivion here, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. I hope that this made sense. Sometimes I talk about this shit and I'm just like, What the hell am I even saying it makes sense to me?

I don't know if it'll make sense to you. This episode might be a failure, but I'm trying to look through a lens of success, even if this is a failure. Maybe this episode is going to teach me something that will lead me to an episode down the line that is a success, maybe I will have a learning from this. I'm looking out my window and I'm looking at trees here in Los Angeles and I'm grateful.

And life is good. So anyway, hopefully this was somewhat helpful in one way or another, if it was, and if you enjoyed it. New episodes of Anything Goes every Thursday and Sunday. You can follow Anything Goes on Instagram to keep up with the show at Anything Goes. You can follow me on Instagram at Emma Chamberlain to keep up with me.

You can check out my coffee company, we might be in a store near you, especially if you live in the U.S. Go ahead and check out the store locator on chamberlaincoffee.com. We're in Walmart, we're in Target.

We are in whole foods, go find us, okay, or just order online if you don't live near a store that we're in. And yeah, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I always love hanging out with you and just talking about metaphors, yummy little metaphors of you, and I hope that you enjoy it too.

But if you don't, that's totally fine, too. I get it, I totally get it, and I just love you and I'll talk to you so soon. I'll talk to you next week.

Okay, love you.