Develop Your Observation Muscle
“Observation is like a muscle; it grows stronger with use, but atrophies without. Exercise your observation muscle and you will become a more powerful decoder of the world around you…” — Joe Navarro
If it is your desire to have a successful and more fulfilling life then you must start taking the time each and every day to be observant. You must make it a point to watch, listen, and experience more of the world around you. As a matter of fact, should you choose to become a more observant person, you will find this provides you a greater opportunity for learning something new, experiencing something new or meeting someone new. It allows you to decode, decipher and make sense of this crazy and complicated world in which we live. It allows you to see the obvious, noticeable, evident or apparent things that others are not seeing. The reason for this is most are looking for that which is hard to see while overlooking what is staring them in the face.
To become a truly observant person, you must make the decision to begin to pay close attention to all that is going on around you. You must learn to take a patient look while carefully considering the information, which can be gained in the same manner as they do to an injured person brought into a hospital. Observation is a procedure whereby the senses of touch, sight, smell, sound and taste generate information about the objects. But true observation goes beyond just the physical stimuli being gathered and recorded. To get true observation you must also utilize your internal subconscious abilities where previous gathered impressions help with the overall observation. You must also learn to ask questions and they must be the right questions for only the proper questions will help produce the correct answers. When you add this to that which is gained by the senses then the subconscious mind can provide a larger and clearer picture of what is going on. With all three of these tools in play, you will now be OBSERVING with the intent of learning something new, experiencing something new, or meeting someone new.
To learn something new through OBSERVATION: You will need to take a persistent look each day at one thing in particular. By doing this you will begin to see that which you have never previously noticed. Developing this skill will help you see more than the vast majority of those around you. This in turn will not only help you live a fulfilling life, but make you a valuable asset to the marketplace. You will have learned how to become a quick study.
To experience something new through OBSERVATION: What kind of person would you be in ten years if you were to make it a goal to experience something new with each and every new day? What would this experience make of you? How much more would you or could you be than you are today? I learned long ago when taking on a new task, new skill, or new job, that if I discovered something new every day I would become better at my task, skill, or craft, making me more valuable to myself and the market place. How many of you have ever applied for a job only to hear them say, “Well, you have the education, but no experience.” Your comeback is always how am I to get it? The answer is to go experience it through observation. Pay someone if necessary, to allow you to follow them and observe. Get out there and start doing and you will get the experience. Don’t wait on others to give you permission, get on doing it now. Go out and observe what others are doing. Take notes and experience something new each day. Stay longer at work so that while everyone else is gone you can EXPERIENCE FOR YOURSELF what it is they were doing while you watched. You don’t need permission to try harder or apply yourself better, you simply need to take the time to observe or stay longer with the intent to observe. You simply need to act.
To meet someone new through OBSERVATION: When you learn to observe, you will also learn that certain actions, expressions, or comments often mean something other than what the person being observed intends. The experienced observer will know exactly how to respond to each action, facial expression, or comment with the right question, which can disarm or lower the defenses of the one being observed thereby, allowing you to introduce yourself without it seeming as if you are butting into their life. By using this method you will have met someone new thereby, increasing the size of your network, which in turn enlarges your capacity in the market place.
Jim Rohn says, “Success is the study of the OBVIOUS. Everyone should be required to take Obvious 1 and Obvious 2 in school.” Taking Obvious 1 & 2 will help you develop your observation muscle making you a more observant person. Obvious means something that is easily perceived or understood. Observation means the action or process of observing something or someone carefully in order to gain information. Seeing as how observation is truly like a muscle, which can be developed stronger and stronger, the thing to do is to exercise it by looking for the obvious or self-evident. The more you do the better you will get at focusing on others rather than yourself. By learning to look for the OBVIOUS this will also help you develop the necessary trait of influencing and winning people and that is what success is all about.
Along with this my father in law used say people spend too much time looking for the complicated or hard answer rather than the obvious or simple one. This was his way of saying, “Learn to look for the OBVIOUS.” It was his belief people spent too much time overlooking the simple. In essence, he was saying the same thing as Jim Rohn.
You must learn to be observant of that which is going on around you and for the best results learn to be observant of the needs of others. In doing so you will be in a position of being able to fill those needs and thus in a position of bringing a blessing to them as well as yourself. That is truly the objective of taking classes on the Obvious.
Best of LUCK as you
Labor Under Correct Knowledge…
Respectfully,
Rick Cox