I’ve sure you’ve heard the expression “can’t see the forest for the trees”.
It means that sometimes you can get so close to something you can’t see the blindingly obvious.
It’s true!
Sometimes we ARE so focused on what we’re doing at any one moment, that we ignore things which should be obvious.
Here’s an example…
Back in 1999 some two psychologists and cognitive scientists did an experiment at Harvard University where they made a short video of people passing a basketball around.
They showed the video to test subjects and asked them to count the number of times the players in the white shirts passed the ball to each other.
People got so wrapped up in counting the number of passes, they totally failed to spot a guy in a gorilla suit walking right through the middle of the action!
You can see the video on YouTube It’s hilarious.
But seriously, though…
The experiment revealed two things:
- that most people miss a lot of what goes on around them, and
- that most of us have no idea that we are missing so much.
Surprisingly, it has become one of the best-known experiments in psychology, and has been described in most introductory textbooks.
It is featured in more than a dozen science museums.
It has also been used by everyone from preachers and teachers to corporate trainers and terrorist hunters to help explain what we see and what we don’t see.
The originators of the experiment, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simonds, even wrote a book about it called “The Invisible Gorilla” to explore the limits of human intuition and what they mean for ourselves and our world.
I want you to do something for me today.
When you’re doing something familiar (walking down the street, for instance) take a good look at what’s going on around you.
Even if you’ve been down the road a thousand times, I’ll bet you’ll find something you haven’t noticed before.
Then take a look at your life.
You’re sure to find an opportunity you hadn’t seen before now.
You can learn much more about raising your awareness to the opportunities around you in our comprehensive training course, The Abundance Mindset.
