We see with our brains, not with our eyes.
Don’t believe me?
Have you ever heard of the white gorilla test?
The white gorilla test is a sociological experiment where the participant is told to count the number of times a ball is being thrown around a basketball court in a video. In the middle of it, a white gorilla begins to dance on the screen and hop around.
And the end of the video, the researcher asks what did they see.
Most people don’t see the gorilla. They just tell the researcher how many basketball passes they saw.
Sounds crazy. You wouldn’t be fooled, right?
Well, I want you to do an experiment.
I want you to take a look at the room around you and write down what you see, then take a picture.
Don’t say it. It is important that you write it down.
Come back later in the day and look at that picture and write down what you see.
I would be shocked if that list matches.
We see with our brains, and our brains come with narratives that are shaped by our moods and thoughts.
Narratives are relative, based on whatever surrounds that narrative at the time.
Most of us react to the narrative.
We can’t fight the narrative though. It comes with our brains, and it is a part of the hardware.
Great leaders recognize this and know that there is no way to stop yourself from making a narrative. They don’t even try.
What they do is stop the reaction.
Recognizing and preventing reactionary relativity is the theme for the month, and each week, we are going to explore a different side of it.
Before I begin though, I wonder
What are some ways you’ve seen or things you’ve done to help you not react?
From the desk of Adam Thomas 