The Personal Development Checklist is a great way of gaining some valuable insight about your life and the way you want to live it.
The Power of Observation
In the land of the
blind the one eyed man is king.
It’s one of those sayings that seems
universally acknowledged for its truth, and equally universally ignored. After
all, haven’t most people got two good eyes? The thing is, the saying isn’t
about how many eyes you’ve got, or how good they are, it’s about how well you
use them.
One of the strangest things about being a human is the way
we have to unconsciously ignore most of the information available to our senses
We have to do this to continue functioning – otherwise we’d
probably end up like those old fashioned sci-fi robots – all flashing lights,
warning buzzers and smoke pouring from our ears as we shout overload – overload!
Then of course, there’d be a sparky flash and
we’d blow a fuse.
So the ability to be blind to most of what we see and deaf
to most of what we hear is quite useful. It helps us get by in life.
Unfortunately there’s a flip side, because we also miss a lot
of very important stuff – and especially when it comes to our increasingly
complex work environments, where office politics and competing personalities
can leave us baffled and floundering.
Whatever our role we tend to be so busy just getting along that
we rarely make the time to sit up and really take notice. So in this particular
land of the blind we may well be with the blind. Those that have taken the time
to properly look about them have a tremendous advantage over us.
Habit of not looking
It’s an advantage that has been handed to them because while
they have the habit of looking, we are in the habit of not
looking, of not
hearing – of not noticing
. Making the
decision to change that habit can offer immense paybacks. Many of my coaching
clients have cited their new found observation habit as their key to unlocking
their personal power and their ability to change things for the better.
Here are just a few of the benefits of enhanced observation
skills:
- Better understanding of friends and rivals, bosses and staff
- Improved
decision making skills
- Recognising
and emulating ‘success behaviour’ (whatever your own definition of
‘success’ is)
- Learning
the best ways to help people
- Learning
the best ways to influence people
- Finding
new ways to solve persistent problems
- Seeing opportunities and problems before they happen
With benefits like these it’s no surprise that confidence
and self belief improve too.
But isn’t all this talk of observation a bit creepy, you may
ask. If what we mean by observation is spying, I’d agree. However, every day
observation skills need not be even remotely underhand. That’s because the
amazing and powerful things you are likely to notice are already plainly in
view.
As Jonathan Swift said: vision
is the art of seeing things invisible to others.
And why does so much of
what’s in front of us seem invisible? Well, perhaps because people only see what they are prepared to
see
(Ralph Waldo Emerson), and because: what
we see depends mainly on what we look for
(John Lubbock).
Getting the
Observation Habit.
Building the observation habit is surprisingly easy. It
takes little more than choosing a focus for your budding observation skills,
and the willingness to practice. I’d recommend focusing on one kind of event or
one person at first. And it’s also useful if there is some kind of challenge
you wish to address. This might be something like how to be more effective in
meetings by observing behaviours and reactions, or perhaps how to communicate
better with an awkward member of staff. It can also be very effective for
learning to handle someone who intimidates you.
Once you get into the swing of being more observant you’ll
probably find an interesting by-product – it’s actually great fun. In fact you
can enjoy it so much that your observation habit can seem more like a hobby.
If you want to get the best out of your enhanced vision I’d
recommend one tool above all others – a journal. Journaling is a fantastic
learning tool. It consolidates the things you’ve learned during the day and often
leads to fantastic insights that you would never have had otherwise. How do you
journal? Simply make yourself some quiet time and write about the new things
you’ve seen, and what that means to you.
So – are you really happy to keep the blinkers on – or would
you prefer to try a little experiment with your ability to really see what’s
going on around you? Start today. You’ll be surprised.
Copyright 2007 - Andrew Leigh. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint
Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the
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credit.
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Andrew Leigh helps people achieve fulfilling life direction and wellbeing, as well as working with those wishing to find, exploit or follow their own creative voice.
You can find a free self-coaching guide, coaching tools and articles at his website http://www.pathwayscoaching.co.uk