Blind Spots: Banish Them Or Else!
Blind leading the blind…it’s never an attractive concept.
But does that describe how you feel you are in terms of how you’re impacting your own life, somehow?
Is it possible that when it comes to luck, you’re guilty of having a psychological blind spot toward it?
Apparently…yes.
Studies have shown that psychological blind spots exist. In 1999 a study was carried out by Daniel Simons at Harvard University, where volunteers were asked to watch a 30 second film of people playing basketball, tasked with the responsibility of having to count the number of passes made by each team.
Afterwards, they were asked for their tally and also asked if they had seen anything unusual while they were counting passes. Very few put their hands up to say that they had seen anything odd. It turns out that a man dressed as a gorilla walked onto the court and beat his chest at the camera. Although it’s hard to imagine that someone could miss something like that, it turned out that most of the test subjects had been too busy counting passes to even notice that the “gorilla” was even there.
What does this have to do with the price of rice, you ask?
It’s the perfect demonstration of what a psychological blind spot is, that’s what.
And it’s very possible that a psychological blind spot could be causing you to miss out on new and unusual opportunities that, if you were to utilize them, could change your luck and your life in a big way.
It turns out that under pressure, we are likely to miss unusual things that are right under our very noses.
Further studies have shown that we all think alike, to the point where if you ask people to pick a number between 1 and 10, most choose 5 or 7–nearly without fail. This is important, since if you think and act the same as everyone else, you’re going to get the same thing that everyone else has. History has rewarded the innovators, not slaves to convention. If you want to turn your life around, you have to be open to change, be willing to be innovative, and cast off convention…maybe not completely, but perhaps to a healthy degree.
Sadly, thought processes are often molded, by schools and corporations alike, to focus on conformity, to the point where students and businesspeople have a very difficult time when it comes to creative and/or “out of the box” thinking. But businesses need to be innovative or they’ll be taken out by the next successful disruptor in their industry…and students need to be more creative or they’re just going to become adult drones who are slaves to the grind.
Okay, you say…but what does this have to do with luck, per se?
If you want to view luck as an acronym (Labor Under Correct Knowledge), think of things this way: we need to encourage creativity and non-conformist thinking within ourselves, even if it’s just 10% of the time. Most people don’t even do it for more than 1% of the time, so what’s 9% (or a little bit) more on your part. If you engage in off-the-beaten-path sort of thinking, you’ll be able to open your mind, let alone your eyes, to opportunities to change bad luck or bad fortune to good all around you.
If you’re smart, you’ll take advantage of those opportunities. Others won’t.
That’s all the more success (“good luck”) for you!
Some opportunities will be easier and/or more self-evident than others, but they’re still there. Remove the blind spots you have, pull your nose away from the grindstone and see everything around you that there is to see…then get creative and remix things instead of sticking with the same old song.
Some remixes have outsold their original versions…so it’s no surprise, then, that often times innovation is key.
Getting creative and innovative can help you out a great deal both personally and professionally. Nobody got anywhere by staying stuck in a rut. No real successful person got anywhere by traveling the road most traveled.
If you want to change your luck and up the odds of success, therefore, you have to focus your attention in new and unusual places. Getting luckier isn’t going to happen “just because”–you’ve got to help fate out!
Labor under correct knowledge is a great way to make your life better than it’s ever been before. But knowledge isn’t automatically power. It’s potential power–you’ve got to apply it, and while doing so, be ready to be creative so as to best exploit what’s on tap. Knowledge consists of information, understanding or skill that you get from education or experience…but familiarity breeds complacency.
When you get creative with what’s at hand and do things a different way, you may just get different (and luckier) results.
Grab our 43-page eBook, “The Woman-101 31-Day Life Reboot Guide” FREE, by joining the Woman-101 Hoot-Whoot! Club. Go to: www.woman-101.com and join us!
