By: Ken Austin
If you find yourself dreaming of great things to come, stop wasting time and do something to achieve them now. A person can spend their whole life dreaming, while missing every single opportunity which presents itself.
I read an interesting book by Richard Wiseman, called "Did you spot the gorilla?" The book is written to inspire anybody who has their eyes closed to the multitude of opportunities presented to them each day on a silver platter.
The title of the book comes from an experiment in which a group of people are shown a short video clip of a basketball game. They are told to count how many times the ball is passed from one player to the other. At the end of the clip, the group are asked if they noticed anything strange, they did not. The experiment ends when the group are shown the video again and are asked "Did you spot the gorilla?" During the clip, a man in a gorilla suit walks onto the screen, beats his chest and then walks off again. The study showed that very few people noticed the gorilla.
The purpose of the experiment is to show that when the mind is preoccupied with a task (in this case, counting the number of times the ball is passed,) it is very rare that we notice anything else. This phenomenon is sometimes known as tunnel vision.
When we take a step back, we are able to look at things with a different perspective. With this different perspective, opportunities may present themselves - those of us who sieze upon these opportunities are bound for success. I am not going to look back in 50 years time and regret failing to grasp an opportunity with both hands, are you?
Stop living in the future, forget about the past. Today WAS your future, yesterday... what did you do about it then? Live each and every day to the fullest. There is no time like the present.
