Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Straight from my Mother's lips...

Just like Madonna, The Beatles, Bill Clinton and the VW Bugs; all things reinvented can only achieve success if properly marketed at the right place at the right time.

From Diane Sawyer to Katy Couric, NBC’s Brian Williams and countless of sleepless reporters positioned on local and national fronts; this weeks hot button is a statement my mother used billions of times when I’d lose something of value, “It’s probably hidden in plain sight.”

Hidden in plain sight…no dining in caves or playing racquet ball on the walls of an arcade in the center of Alkida; Osama Bin Laden was free to be. Is anybody shocked? Look at the years and months before September 11, 2001…those involved drove on our streets, ate in our favorite restaurants and probably watched as Donald Trump got richer and richer.

Hidden in plain sight…your car keys, the blue, black or brown sock, lighter fluid for the grill, the hammer or screw driver; no day passes that we aren’t searching for something. Like your career; finding success on the jagged edge of a recession that won’t go away is no different than sending the military out to find a killer.

Sweat, dedication, loyalty and determination means nothing to American business owners and the stockholders they have clinging to their weak knees. The nation has become so oversaturated with the present that accountants have forgotten that a vision of the future is required to make to the doors of tomorrow open. So they create shortcuts that become too costly forcing decision makers to sit in a pair of $1,000 shoes at their $40,000 desk on $80,000 carpets and say two words, “Cut back.”

Maybe, just maybe the answer to locating success without shipping it overseas is hidden in plain sight.

A great read is The Invisible Gorilla and Other ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us.

People think I’m a freak for endlessly seeking the entire layout of all things connected. I’ve been labeled paranoid as well as horrified of the future before it arrives and yet very few understand that I’m doing nothing more than playing a game taught to my child self by the cast and crew of Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other things.

The Invisible Gorilla is the man woman or young adult that stood in front of you at the convenience store and you didn’t see them put the candy bar in their pocket or reach around the power pills and sexual enhancers and pull a few coins from the donation bucket. When asked what they looked like or what they were wearing, the imagination takes over giving no one a full view of the show you had a front row seat to.

NASA pulled off a airlines study where they experimented with what commercial pilots see while flying giant 727’s. Pilots aren’t just anybody’s…they’re some of the most experienced people on the planet having flown for the United States Air Force or have put in thousands of hours of flight time for other operations. The pilots were put in simulators to test their landing skills during times of bad weather, slippery runways or conditions of an unexpected nature. Over and over the pilots performed the tests to the point of near perfection and then NASA took it to a different level, during a strong thunderstorm with horrid winds and damaging lightning the scientists inserted an another airplane on the runway; they didn’t see it. It was hidden in plain sight.

Because of these tests changes are continuously made to save lives. Between 2004 and 2007 the FAA reported 1,353 runway incursions in the United States, only one of them resulted in a collision.

A police officer was sent to prison because he couldn’t prove to those investigating an on-the-ground chase that he wasn’t the person behind the smoking gun. His mind couldn’t generate the picture of what took place therefore the evidence was against him until he was able to locate lawyers who trusted his story sending them back out to the streets to locate the truth.

Hidden in plain sight…the stepfather figure used to yell at me, “You wouldn’t know where your head was if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders!”

I must not be the only one; look at us today with cell phones connected to websites, bank accounts, business emails and clients that never stop demanding, digital notebooks, IPods crammed with every song that rocks our world and gas guzzling vehicles that better come with half the stuff we’ve got readily available at home plus a new car smell. Who has the time to watch what’s taking place in the corners of our eyes.

Why are there so many invisible gorillas in our current chapters? According to my eye doctor it’s because the shape of the human eye is moving through an evolution. Everything we own, read and invite into our pleasures is on a flat screen; we were born to hunt and inside a real world things that are round don’t fit into the rectangle hole.

She loves the idea that we’re glued to our cell phones and Kindles because it increases our reasons to visit the eye doctor. The invisible gorilla here…we’re teaching ourselves the fine art of no longer paying attention to round balls coming at us across a home plate that could lead us to scoring major points.

Hidden in plain sight…wait wait! I’m using the wrong word. No wonder we’ve become blind in parking lots and fail to see accidents on freeways so we cause another then another. The only sight the majority of us know is spelled “site.” What website is that again?

Never forget the golden rule of security; those who are aware of the paths they walk know when one of these things is not like the others. Being a second degree black belt means nothing to a criminal; they come with no rules and will fight until there’s nothing left to give. Therefore your only requirement is to never put yourself in a position of danger and if a single object doesn’t fit with the entire scene it’s not your mission to become Rambo but rather find every reason to quickly leave. Constantly search for the invisible gorilla knowing how easy it is to hide in plain sight.

arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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