THE POWER OF OBSERVATION & THE HOLOGRAPHIC BLUEPRINT

Yesterday, Dilip popped into my place to have a quick pow-wow. As usual, we covered a broad range of interesting subjects, besides trivia of the week.

During the course of conversation, Dilip brought up a fascinating point.

He was relating a TV show he saw recently, during which a magician had interviewed - live - a woman who had earlier seen an unknown man just walked past.

When asked at the beginning, she wasn't sure about specific details of the man, but when cajoled by the magician, & at the same time putting her at ease, she was able to talk about details of the cap, the jacket, the inside T-shirt, etc., which the guy had apparently worn.

What a remarkable feat?

Actually, each & every one of us has that ability. It's innate.

Whatever person, object &/or event that falls in our field of vision is always captured by our mind, consciously as well as unconsciously.

Don't forget that we also have both a focused vision as well as peripheral vision.

Focused vision generally captures what is directly in front of us, or our eyes, so to speak.

Peripheral vision often captures what is at the corner of our eyes, even for a fleeting moment. Most scientists believe that peripheral vision is the most powerful of the two.

In fact, its vision field is comparatively much broader than the focused vision

More importantly, sensory information from the environment flows into our peripheral vision unconsciously. In other words, without realising the entire experience.

When the two vision fields are synergisticaly "combined", so to speak, you can imagine our latent power of observation.

When you scan a horizon, say in a broad sweep, you are actually using both inherent vision skills.

In reality, when we look at the horizon of our immediate environment, we are not depending on our eyes alone. We also use our ears, our sense of smell, our sense of feeling about what's around us, about the ambience, etc.

All these sensory data are somehow processed, synthesised & integrated in our mind.

The end result is what I often like to call, drawing intellectual cues from Dr Karl Pribram, Professor Emeritus of Stanford University, a "holographic blueprint" of our sense impressions, which is created by the "interference patterns" of prevailing sights, sound, smells, feelings, etc.

It is pertinent for me to point out that the "holographic blueprint" is not really a tangible thing per se.

Neurologically, it's actually a resulting networking pattern of neurons & brain cells firing in harmony during the process of assimilation of incoming data.

The blueprint may generally be fuzzy, but it's there. Always. So, once we are in a resourceful state of mind, we can often recall the blueprint with ease.

We are know that kids are truly adept in using their power of observation, so much so that we often think that only kids have that acute sensory acumen.

Don't forget, we were kids before. It is just that, as adults, our logical sensor invariably often like to take primary control.

One way to practise this power of observation is to "gaze" at our environment, & try not to "stare" at one particular point or aspect.

This is also called "soft focus".

Innovation strategist Wayne Burkan calls it "splatter vision", which I had already talked about it at length in this weblog.

What can we use it for?

One area of immediate application is reading.

With "soft focus", we are able to look at a larger area of the book pages, thus giving us the ability to pinpoint the topic sentences or key ideas rather quickly, & also learn to identify text organisational patterns, signal words, as well as contextual clues to difficult words in the text.

Once we have gotten the global overview of what we have read initially, so to speak, it becomes much more easier for us to narrow down the requisite passages to read more slowly with focused attention, in order to meet our reading objectives.

[to be continued in the Next Post.]

THE POWER OF SOFT FOCUS

If you have enjoyed watching the legendary Bruce Lee, whose fists shook the world during the 70's, in the movies, you would probably recall one of his last movies, 'Enter the Dragon' - the one just before the 'Game of Death'.

In the opening segment of the movie, Bruce Lee was seen working with a young martial arts student, who just didn't seem to get the essence of a particular move, when asked repeatedly to kick our hero.

Bruce instructed him to do it with "feeling" or rather "emotional content", but the student still had trouble getting beyond the technique to the spirit of the move.

So, Bruce provided him with what I thought was a very beautiful illustration:

"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon", while stretching out his arm & pointing towards the sky."

At the same time, the student began to stare at Bruce's finger, & Bruce gave a quick smack on top of the seemingly bewildered student's head, saying:

"Don't look at the finger, or you'll miss all of that heavenly glory."

[Amusingly, if you had paid attention to the movie: After the lesson, the student bowed, but Bruce smacked him again, & warned him that he should not take his eyes off his opponent, even when bowing.

The student bowed one last time, but this time he kept his eyes on Bruce. Bruce said: "That's better." The student then walked away with a grin.]

What Bruce Lee had demonstrated in the movie was essentially the power of soft focus.

'Soft focus' comes about when we are gazing at what's around us, or what's ahead of us, in the far horizon, rather than staring at what's directly in front of us.

That's to say, one is totally aware of what's happening around oneself, immediate as well as beyond, when in 'soft focus'.

I would even add that, with 'soft focus', one even has this gut-feel/intuitive sense of one's surroundings, immediate as well as beyond.

Especially as a martial artist, 'soft focus' is critical to personal success.

In fact, legendary Japanese combat strategist of the 16th century, Miyamoto Musashi, excelled in it too.

In today's rapidly-changing world at accelerating pace & with increasing complexity, I believe that 'soft focus' is a prerequisite for personal as well as professional success.

It's akin to wide-angle vision, as illustrated beautifully by innovation strategist Wayne Burkan in his now classic book bearing the same name, which I had already reviewed in an earlier post.

He calls it 'splatter vision'.

He explains, from the business world perspective:

"In reality, you are unfocusing your eyes, maximising your peripheral vision, sustaining a soft focus, increasing your view of the landscape with an almost 180 degree-field-of-vision, in order to avoid becoming so focused that you expect your challenge to come from a specific direction!"

I fully agree with Wayne Burkan that 'soft focus' is a useful & powerful anticipation tool, with which you can apply to constantly scan the entire business landscape in sweeping motions in order to avoid missing "unexpected gaps", which could be potential threats &/or hidden opportunities.