Do You Have a Success Killing Scotomas In Your Life?

Over the weekend my wife and I took my kids to the Children’s Museum in Chicago. As always my kids were maniacs and running from one thing to the next. In the middle of the place they have this 2 story rope climb / tree house climb. My boys always want to do it, but…

They want Daddy to help them do it. The problem is they are getting too big for me and them to be in the contraption. So I was pushing them to do it by themselves. What happened next infuriated me, but I stayed calm.

My 2 and 4-year-old kept saying, “I can’t!” or “I want mommy!”

Clearly Mommy coddles them too much! 😊 Just kidding, my wife Denise is probably more daring than myself.

The biggest problem with saying things like, “I can’t!” or “I want Mommy!” is your mind completely shuts down, your body freezes and you can’t find the solutions.

Another way to look at this have you ever been asked to find something or fetch something for someone like ketchup or salt and you could find it? Only to have them come up and pluck it from right in front of your nose.

This is called a Scatoma – a partial loss of vision or blind spot in an otherwise normal visual field.

I think we can all recollect a time where this has happened to us. But, why does this happen to us?

A good way to explain this is when you’re sitting at your computer and your looking for something on a website or a document and you can’t find it. I often hear people and do it my self where they are saying derogatory things at their computer as if it is the computers fault.

Or

I have had people who believe they are bad at directions have fear overcome them when you tell them they have to go somewhere new by themselves to do something important.

These events produce a Scotoma because what is going on in our head. Your problem is your…

FOCUS

When information comes in we either …

Generalize

Delete

Distort

We generalize based on our passed experience.

We delete information because we have negative self-talk.

We distort the situation because of the state we’re in.

My boys were generalizing this new thing as difficult. They had negative self-talk and were deleting the possibilities of where to place their hands and feet. The were distorting the situation because they were in a fearful state. Thus, all they say were problems instead of possibilities.

The way to have success is control your focus. You can control your focus by quieting down the self-talk and putting yourself in a state that is fitting for the circumstance.

There is one state I use to help me solve problems. That state is the…

No Nothing State

I derived this from Neuro Linguistic Programming. In NLP they call this the learning state. During the learning state you completely clear your mind of everything and let your mind go to work and solve the problem. You need to clear all the chatter out and take control of your state. The best way is to go to the No Nothing State or Learning State. This takes some practice and some utilization to master.

I encourage you to go to YouTube and look up the process to learn the Learning State. This is one key and strategy to becoming a great problem solver. Once you clear your mind possibilities and solutions appear.

How important is this?

The big question is where do you have Scotomas in your business, relationships, health, etc.?