It's All Right Before Your Eyes

Recently, I had the opportunity to take a few practice swings with my brother-in-law's putter. It felt good in my hands. I liked the length, which was shorter than my own putter. I should cut one of my old putter's down to that length, I thought. I have a putter in the basement that would be perfect.

I rummaged through the basement closet in search. I went through my wife's golf bag, where I sometimes store old clubs. I began pulling items out of the closet for a better look.

No putter.

I unpacked the upstairs storage closet. Still no go. I went over to my sister's house, where I'd stored my clubs while my wife and I were travelling for a year, convinced someone had liberated the putter for their own round. I rummaged through their closets and in their golf bags. No putter. Had I lent it to someone and never got it backI? My recollection was foggy.

Eventually, I gave up looking and wrote the putter off. It was gone, sucked into some other plane of existence.

And then last week, I found that putter in the basement closet where I'd first looked, shining out at me like a beacon. It wasn't in some dark corner or hidden behind skis. It was right in front of my eyes.  Somehow, in my initial search, I'd looked right through it.

A few days ago, in the kitchen, my wife asked me to pass her the olive oil. I looked at the spot on the counter where the olive oil always is kept, now just an empty space. "Where is it," I asked.

"Right there!" My wife's back was turned as she chopped onions. She turned, pointing to the olive oil bottle— right before my eyes. It was sitting two feet away from it's usual place, but it was still in my line of sight. I didn't see it, even though I was looking right at it.

My wake up call was the event this morning when my wife added "shampoo" to our grocery list. "But, I just bought some last week," I said. "No, you bought conditioner."  I marched straight into the bathroom. "I bought shampoo!"  I found the bottle, looked at the label and sure enough, there it was in plain letters — CONDITIONER.  That mixup stung, because I'd made a point to double check the label while in the store to ensure I was buying shampoo and not conditioner—and still got it wrong.

Now, I might very well be going senile, but, I don' think that's the case. Disregarding my sporadic inability to pull up words when I want them, there's no other evidence to support it. The root of the problem is a wavering lack of alertness, making me blind to things right before my eyes.  I have a growing awareness that this is happening most days in my personal life and have decided to make a conscious effort to change it.

Which then makes me think—what's getting past me in my working life? How much else am I looking right at and choosing not to see?

Seeing is not a true experience. It's selective. In order to cut down on processing the volumes of data that our eyes deliver, we've conditioned our brains to unconsciously choose what to process of all that we see. We see, but we don't always register that we see.

Need to test this theory? Watch a movie and then watch it again the next day — a good movie, by a director who knows what he/she is doing. Notice what you missed the first time you watched. The sub-plot you didn't even know was there, the facial expression of an actor that reveals something new, or an action in the background that changes the whole perspective on a scene and busts the film wide open. Your brain, having already processed the movie once the first time you watched it, is free to process more and allow you to see it all over again.

The incidents with the golf club, the olive oil and the shampoo switcheroo are signs of a constant struggle with an attention deficit that if left unchecked, will affect the quality of my working life. Blame it on an overactive and undisciplined brain that likes to run like an open tap when it's excited or anxious. I have to make a deliberate and conscious choice at the important moments to be present and alert. In fact, I know that being able to be in the moment and truly see what is happening in each moment is one of the keys to a successful, fulfilling life.

Pull out a project you're working on and "re-watch the movie," reviewing it all over again. What do you notice this time? Is there something you missed that could raise the whole idea to a new level? Are innovations, connections and ideal solutions still waiting to be discovered because your brain chose to miss them the first time?

Learning to retrain your brain and re-see is a whole other topic in itself. But, for today, for THIS MOMENT, will yourself to be totally aware. It's a choice. You're brain doesn't run mental marathons on its own. You can choose what you think and choose to see what you want to see.

So go ahead and choose.