The mind is an extraordinary tool, capable of such intense laser-focus, that it can exclude all other data, as is so beautifully demonstrated in this very short test of your attention.
If you’ve never watched this before, drop everything you’re doing and take one minute out of your life to perform the task (you don’t need the sound on – instructions are given on the screen and it’s a purely visual exercise).
Once you've watched it (you did watch it, didn't you?), or if you've seen it before and you already know the score, you can read on.
Spoilers below.
(Watch the video)
I’ve never had the luxury of seeing this clip without knowing what to look for, as I was introduced to it in anecdote.
But yesterday, when it popped into my head as a great way of introducing today’s Daily Reminder, I got both my wife and my 11yo daughter to watch it and blow me, if their jaws didn’t drop at the grand reveal – neither of them had any idea there was a socking great gorilla beating its chest in the middle of the screen at one point!!
🦍🫣😳🤯
What’s this got to do with relationships?
Well, many a conversation I have with clients goes something like this:
“I’ve got this family member/work colleague I have to see. We don’t really get on. We wind each other up. I don’t know what to do about that. Please help.”
(You can relate, because I can relate.)
And the answer is right there, beating its chest in the middle of the question.
We have to widen our focus, to look for more than what we just expect to see.
The mind is such a phenomenally good (read: lazy) pattern-matching machine, that if we enter into an interaction with another human being thinking “They’re an idiot” then the mind will go looking for examples of idiotic behaviour, in order to prove itself right and—hey presto!—we get the experience we predicted.
🪄
It’s not rocket science. You just watched a video to prove it: you were told to zone in on how many times the ball passed between the white-clad players (≅ ‘idiotic behaviour’) and you failed to notice the socking great gorilla beating its chest in the middle of the screen (≅ other stuff about this person you never see, because your mind is too focused on what an idiot they are.)
At the heart of this particular relationship conundrum is what we always come back to here in the Daily Reminders: the fact that while it looks like you’re having a felt experience of ‘out there’ (e.g. frustrated, ‘because of’ so-and-so’s idiotic behaviour), what you’re actually experiencing is an inner world of ever-changing, perspective-shifting, anything-is-possible Thought.
➤ 100% of our feelings come from (the Principle of) Thought
➤ 0% of our feelings come from our circumstances
So the next time you find the Reader Ego Construct 📦 lapsing into old patterns of focus around ‘that’ person, just remember to look for the gorilla passing through your interaction with them.
It’s there, you just didn’t spot it.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft