I Bet You Didn’t Notice This

If you notice something, it’s important.

But that’s not what you were taught.

Central to our education is the teaching that our individual thinking is unimportant and unauthorised.

Any clever insight that we conjured up needed a reference and every reference needed to be authoritative.

We live in a world that’s conditioned us to actively suppress what we notice until we’re authorised to do so.

We keep our food reviews private, because we’re not food critics.

We hold our film reviews loosely, because we’re not film experts.

We’ve learnt to disregard and downplay our perceptions because we’re afraid to examine our own thoughts and feelings.

We notice things all the time - the very thoughts that spend an extra moment in our heads, that require a second look or a little extra digestion.

They stop us in our tracks, pull us from reality, transport us back in time and even overwhelm us with emotion.

Is that not important?

But just like the magic in our dreams, the moment is fleeting. Because we allow it to be.

Imagine if we began to take notice of what we noticed.  Has anything in your education ever taught you to do so? Yet, it’s what the world craves.

How do you think experts cultivate their ‘sixth-sense’ for what’s excellent? Or their ‘taste’ for up and coming talent? They give authority to what they notice.

Try to closely examine that which you notice — it means something.

It can’t be done actively, but rather, with a cunning passivity.

Then, assign some authority to yourself.

After all, who else is going to give you the authority that what you feel is important?

It’ll have to be you.