THE COMBAT MANUAL

Picture & Processing — The Next Layer of Your Uniqueness

Taught by John Lenhart  |  flowcess.com

Last month we established your Intangible Driver — the WHY behind everything you do, the effect you are always trying to have on the people around you. That accounts for roughly 40% of your uniqueness. This month we add the next 40% by covering two additional dimensions: your Picture Perspective and your Processing Perspective.

Together, these three dimensions — Driver, Picture, and Processing — give you much more insight into your uniqueness.  If your Intangible Driver is your “city”, then your Picture and Processing perspectives are your “neighborhood”.  So, we’re getting closer to finding your specific “address”, which is your individual uniqueness. And the more specific your self-knowledge becomes, the more precisely you can understand your own spiritual defense, your relationship dynamics, and how God communicates with you personally.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR SPIRITUAL WARFARE The enemy does not attack you generically. He attacks your specific wiring — the places where your particular combination of Driver, Picture, and Processing creates predictable vulnerabilities. A Big Picture person gets attacked through distraction and scattered thinking. A Micro picture person gets paralyzed by an overwhelming flood of detail. An Internal thinker gets isolated and made to believe their silence is weakness. An External thinker gets their words used against them. Knowing your uniqueness is knowing your terrain. You defend terrain you know.

One important note before we get into the specifics: both Picture Perspectives and both Processing Perspectives are exactly equal in value. Neither is smarter, more spiritual, or more mature than the other. What matters is knowing which one you are — because misidentifying yourself costs you energy, effectiveness, and self-understanding every single day.

Picture Perspective: Which Half of the Brain Do You Enter First?

The old concept of ‘left brain versus right brain’ has been thoroughly debunked by neuroscience. We use both hemispheres to confirm anything. What Picture Perspective describes is something more subtle and more practical: which half of the brain does your mind tend to enter first when processing new information?

Think of it like handedness. Almost everyone can use both hands. The question is which hand gives you energy and which one costs you energy. You are not ‘both-handed’ in any meaningful sense — you have a preference, and that preference shapes how you engage with the world more than almost any other single factor.

Big Picture is focused on the relationships between facts — the whole parade. Small Picture is focused on the facts themselves — the whiskers on the Siberian tiger. Neither is right. Both are essential.

THE PARADE ANALOGY

Here is the clearest way to identify where you land. Imagine someone is describing a parade to you.

If you are Big Picture, you would describe that parade by jumping around — not in order, covering everything broadly, painting the whole scene. You would talk about the color, the energy, the floats, the crowd, the marching band, the smell of popcorn — all of it, probably not sequentially. If you are listening to a Big Picture person describe a parade and you are Small Picture, your first thought is: ‘Is this person ever going to stop?’ And your second thought is: ‘Am I going to have to remember all of this?’ Because it feels like there is no structure, no sequence, nowhere to hold onto.

Now flip it. When the Big Picture person finishes, the Small Picture person picks one element from the parade — say, the tigers in the animal act — and talks about it in as much detail as they want. Siberian tigers. Whisker length. Dietary habits. The specific trainer and their methodology. And if you are Big Picture listening to that, your internal experience is: ‘We are talking about whiskers on a tiger? There is a whole parade happening and this is where we are?’ The Big Picture person feels boxed in. Trapped. Like the whole landscape has shrunk to a single pixel.

That mutual friction is not a character flaw in either person. It is simply two different picture perspectives experiencing each other without a framework for understanding what is happening.

THE DRIVING ANALOGY

John uses a driving parallel that is worth internalizing. How Big Picture you are is how far down the road your eyes tend to focus. If you are Macro Picture — extreme Big Picture — you are looking at the horizon. You will drive right through a pothole without seeing it because it is not even in your visual field. It is too close.

How Small Picture you are is how close to the hood your eyes focus. If you are Micro Picture — extreme Small Picture — you are watching the road immediately in front of you so closely that you can miss the exit sign entirely. You were not distracted. You were simply focused at such a granular level that the larger navigation cues passed by unnoticed.

This is not a problem with anyone’s intelligence or attentiveness. It is simply where in the field each person’s attention naturally goes.

THE SIX LEVELS OF PICTURE PERSPECTIVE

LEVEL	PICTURE TYPE	ENERGY PATTERN	STEPS OPPOSITE WAY	COMMON CHALLENGE
🔵  Macro	Big Picture (extreme)	Only 1 step small before losing energy	1 step	Gets lost in detail immediately — math, spreadsheets, fine print
🔵  Big	Big Picture (typical)	2–3 steps small before losing energy	2–3 steps	Can get distracted — jumps between topics; misses potholes
🔵  Big-ish	Big Picture (mild)	Can go small indefinitely without losing energy — but still prefers big	Indefinite	Often thinks they are ‘both’ — but note where they go for energy
🟤  Small-ish	Small Picture (mild)	Can go big indefinitely without losing energy — but still prefers small	Indefinite	Often thinks they are ‘both’ — same diagnostic: where do you go for energy?
🟤  Small	Small Picture (typical)	2–3 steps big before losing energy	2–3 steps	Can get overwhelmed when topic seems to expand beyond their current level
🟤  Micro	Small Picture (extreme)	Only 1 step big before losing energy	1 step	Cannot be motivated by distant goals — needs the immediate next step only

BIG AND SMALL PICTURE WORKING TOGETHER: THE CAR RIDE

John and his wife are one of the clearest examples of how Big and Small Picture can work together rather than against each other, once you understand the dynamic.

On a long drive, John — Big Picture — starts talking. He paints the whole picture: everything he has been thinking about, all the threads, the broad landscape of whatever is on his mind. His wife — Small Picture — listens. When he is finished, she picks one part of that picture and goes into as much detail as she wants on that one element. While she is doing that, John is not just listening — he is seeing how that specific detail connects back to everything else in his picture. And something remarkable happens: her detail brings his picture into high definition. What was a broad sketch becomes precise and specific. When she finishes, John can extend the picture further because he is now working from something high-def rather than a rough draft. Then she picks something new, goes into detail again, and the cycle continues.

What would normally be a ninety-minute drive feels like twenty minutes. That is what happens when two people understand their Picture Perspectives and work with them instead of against them.

PICTURE PERSPECTIVE AND ARGUMENTS

This is the part of the lesson most people want to go back and replay.

Your Picture Perspective largely determines whether you win or lose most of your arguments — at least until you understand this framework. The rule is simple: if you are Small Picture arguing with a Big Picture person, the moment you go Big, you have lost. The moment they go Small, they have lost. You each have a home field. Leave it and you are playing on the other person’s turf with their rules.

John describes watching a group of men argue and calling the winner before the argument was even over — because he could see the moment the Small Picture person drifted Big. They do not lose at the moment they drift. They have already lost. The drift is the concession. The rest is just catching up to a conclusion that was determined by the shift in picture, not the strength of the argument.

Two Big Picture people arguing together will often end up arguing about something entirely unrelated to where they started. If you have a friend and you regularly ask each other ‘Wait — what were we talking about?’ you are probably both Big Picture. Two Small Picture people arguing can get into genuinely passionate, high-intensity disagreements about punctuation. That is not an exaggeration.

ARGUMENT STRATEGY When arguing with someone of the opposite picture: stay on your home turf. Big Picture people keep the argument at the broad level. Small Picture people anchor to the specific detail. When arguing with someone of the same picture: let them go further that way, and you move slightly toward the opposite. Two Big Picture people? You go slightly Small — anchor to one thing — and let them keep going Big. They will lose themselves in abstraction while you hold the ground.

Processing Perspective: Do You Think to Talk or Talk to Think?

Processing Perspective describes something even more fundamental than Picture: the actual physiological mechanism by which your mind reaches a conclusion. There are only two options, and they are not personality traits or cultural preferences — they are hard-wired into how your brain processes information.

If you are External, you must speak in order to think. The words come out while the thought is still forming. You are not reporting a conclusion — you are building one out loud in real time. If you are Internal, you must think before you can speak. You have the conclusion first — or at minimum, you need silence to form it — and then you communicate it.

John is External. Ed is Internal. That contrast between the two co-teachers of this course is itself instructive.

There is no such thing as an introvert. There are only Internal thinkers who have been made to feel ashamed of how they think.

John is emphatic on this point: the concept of introversion as it is commonly used is a misidentification of Internal processing. It is not that Internal thinkers are drained by people — it is that they need silence to think, and in a world that treats talking-while-thinking as the default mode, they have concluded that something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them. They are simply thinking before they speak. Half the population does this.

THE CLASSROOM EXERCISE

When John teaches this concept in a classroom, he does something simple and immediately clarifying. He tells everyone that there are two types of people — External and Internal — and asks all the External thinkers to stand up.

They stand up. While standing up, they are talking. They are talking about standing up. They are still talking after they sit back down.

Then he asks all the Internal thinkers to stand up. They stand up. Silently. No commentary. Just up.

Then he stops them before they sit down and points out what just happened: the External group could not get up without narrating the experience, and the Internal group could not understand why narration would even be necessary. That five-second demonstration communicates the entire framework more clearly than an hour of explanation.

THE REAL SOURCE OF RELATIONSHIP STRESS

The most common and destructive misunderstanding between Internal and External thinkers is not rudeness or stubbornness — it is a fundamental difference in what words mean.

An External person’s words are negotiating, not deciding. When John’s son came home from school and announced ‘I am never playing for that coach again,’ he was thinking out loud. Two days later he was playing for that coach. He had not lied or broken a promise — he had been external. The statement was part of a process, not the conclusion of one.

An Internal person hearing that statement would hold the person to it — because if an Internal person said it, they would have meant it. They only say things they have already decided. So when an External person changes their position, the Internal person experiences it as a broken commitment. And when an Internal person refuses to shift on a decision, the External person experiences them as rigid and closed.

Neither person is behaving wrongly. They are simply operating from completely different assumptions about what words are for.

RELATIONAL KEY FOR MIXED PAIRS If you are with an Internal thinker: ask questions before they decide, not after. Once an Internal reaches a conclusion, changing it requires revisiting the entire journey. Get in early — during the process — or accept the decision. If you are with an External thinker: wait until they finish talking before responding, because they are still forming the thought. Use close-ended questions to help them land. And do not hold them to their early statements — they were thinking, not deciding.

THE SIX LEVELS OF PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE

LEVEL	TYPE	HOW THEY THINK	PAUSE BEFORE SPEAKING	COMMON MISREAD
🟣  Shy	Internal (extreme)	Must think in silence — 3 to 5+ seconds before answering	3–5+ seconds — if interrupted must start over	Thought of as timid, unintelligent, disengaged — actually deeply processing
🟣  Internal	Internal (typical)	Thinks before speaking — waits 1 to 2 seconds after question ends	1–2 seconds	Seen as an introvert — actually just needs a moment to form a complete thought
🟣  Internal-ish	Internal (mild)	Waits for question to finish, then answers immediately and precisely	Minimal — but never interrupts	Seen as the ‘smartest person in the room’ — Shakespearean actor pattern
🟢  External-ish	External (mild)	Thinks out loud but gets to conclusion quickly — may occasionally interrupt	May begin answering before question ends	Seen as slightly scattered — but conclusions are solid
🟢  External	External (typical)	Must talk to think — frequently interrupts, overshares along the way	None — starts talking immediately or before question ends	Seen as rude or impulsive — actually thinking out loud in real time
🟢  Rude	External (extreme)	Asks questions mid-thought, doesn’t wait for the answer — moves to next thought immediately	None — question may not actually be a question	Appears to ignore people entirely — actually just processing as fast as they can speak

SCHOOL AND THE PROCESSING BIAS

It is worth noting that the educational system was built almost entirely for one type of processing. School rewards the Internal-ish student — the one who waits, who does not interrupt, who has a precise answer ready the moment the question ends and does not need to talk their way to it. The Internal-ish pattern looks like intelligence because it fits perfectly with how classrooms are structured.

The External student — who interrupts, who talks past the answer, who needs to process out loud — gets marked down for behavior, told to wait their turn, and gradually concludes that they are less capable than the student who sits quietly and answers instantly. They are not. They are simply thinking differently. The student who appeared ‘rude’ in the special education classroom John describes — the one who asked questions and did not wait for the answers — was not disengaged. He was processing at full speed, out loud, and the entire interaction with him needed to be redesigned to fit how he actually thought.

PROCESSING AND PRAYER

Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! — Psalm 46:10 (NKJV)

This verse has a different weight depending on your Processing Perspective. For an Internal thinker, stillness is their natural mode of receiving — being still in order to hear from God is not a discipline, it is almost instinctive. The challenge for Internal thinkers in prayer is often the opposite: getting the conclusions they have already formed out of the way long enough to receive something new.

For an External thinker, ‘be still’ can feel like an instruction to do something entirely foreign. John has found that External thinkers often hear from God most clearly through conversation — through the process of talking with God, journaling their thoughts out loud on paper, or verbally processing what they are experiencing. The conclusion — the word from God — often arrives at the end of the talking, not before it. Both approaches are valid. Both are ways of honoring the processing design God built into each person. What matters is knowing which one you are, so you can build a prayer practice that fits your actual wiring rather than someone else’s.

The Two Reference Charts

PICTURE PERSPECTIVE — AT A GLANCE

BIG PICTURE	SMALL PICTURE
Enters the brain from the BIG (abstract/relational) side first	Enters the brain from the SMALL (detail/factual) side first
Focused on relationships BETWEEN facts — sees the whole parade	Focused on the facts themselves — wants to know about Spot the Dalmatian specifically
Describes things broadly, often non-linearly, jumping around	Describes things in precise order, with specific detail
Energized by the overview — loses energy drilling into details	Energized by the detail — can feel overwhelmed by abstract overviews
Driving analogy: focused far down the road — may not see the pothole	Driving analogy: focused near the hood — may miss the exit entirely
Reading: prefers whole-language learning	Reading: prefers phonics learning
Argument: wins by staying big — loses the moment they go small	Argument: wins by staying small — loses the moment they go big
How to connect: let them paint the full picture without interrupting. Then go into detail on one part.	How to connect: pick one detail from their perspective and go as deep as they want to go.

PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE — AT A GLANCE

INTERNAL — Think to Talk	EXTERNAL — Talk to Think
Must think BEFORE speaking — conclusions come first, then words	Must SPEAK in order to think — words come first, conclusion arrives through talking
Conclusions are the BEGINNING of the discussion — they have already decided	Conclusions are the END of the discussion — they are still deciding while they speak
Driving: makes a decision, signals, changes lanes — committed before moving	Driving: signals, checks, negotiates — ‘Do you want me in? Should I wait?’
If interrupted while thinking, must start the thought process over from the beginning	Overshares — may say things they didn’t intend to, because thinking out loud
Words mean exactly what they say — internal people hold themselves and others to their words	Words are negotiating, not committing — external people do not expect to be held to every statement
Often misread as introverted, slow, or stubborn	Often misread as rude, impulsive, or unable to listen
How to connect: ask questions BEFORE they decide. Once the decision is made it is very hard to change. Get in during the journey.	How to connect: use close-ended questions. Let them finish talking before responding — they are still thinking. Don’t hold them to early statements.

Assignment One: Map the People Around You

The assignment that accompanies this lesson is one of the most immediately practical things you will do in this entire course. You are going to identify the Picture Perspective and Processing Perspective of the five people you interact with most — family members, colleagues, close friends, a spouse or partner.

This is not a guessing game. Use what you have learned in this lesson: watch how they describe things. Do they paint the broad landscape or go straight to the specific detail? Watch how they talk. Do they interrupt, overshare, and reach their conclusion through conversation? Or do they pause, choose their words carefully, and say exactly what they mean the first time?

Once you have filled this in, you have a map. You know how to have a conversation with each person that fits how they actually process. You know how to ask questions that open them up rather than shut them down. You know how to argue productively and when to stop. That map is worth more in your daily relationships than almost anything else you could learn.

NAME	INTANGIBLE DRIVER (WHY)	PICTURE PERSPECTIVE	PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE	HOW TO CONNECT WITH THEM
YOUR NAME	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 1:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 2:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 3:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 4:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 5:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________
Name 6:	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________	____________________________

REFLECTION: YOUR OWN PICTURE AND PROCESSING Before filling out the table above, record your own assessment here. Which Picture Perspective do you believe you are, and why? Which Processing Perspective? What in your life — patterns of conversation, how you study, how you pray, how you argue — confirms your answer? _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________

REFLECTION: THE RELATIONSHIP THAT MAKES SENSE NOW Think of one relationship — past or present — where there was persistent friction that you could not fully explain. Based on what you now know about Picture and Processing Perspectives, what do you think was actually happening? What would have been different if you had both understood your own wiring? _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________

You are not difficult. You are unique. There is a difference.

Next time we go deeper — into the third dimension of your uniqueness and how your complete profile connects to your specific calling and spiritual authority.