Recently I read an article by Bob Proctor that had a big impact on me. Bob spoke about how the highest form of human activity is thinking.
Back in the 90’s he used to make regular 25 hour trips Toronto and KualaLumpur every 2 months. On these trips he rarely indugled in any kind of social interaction. Instead he would spend his time thinking.
Out of this thinking came an idea that added millions of dollars to his net worth.
I happened to read this article at a very fortuitous time. I was going to fly from the east coast to the western coast of USA in about 18 hours.
This was a flight that lasts about 6 hours. A trip without any stops and without my family, therefore no distractions.
An ideal opportunity if ever for some serious thinking while flying.
So I grabbed a blank pad, a pen and settled down in the plane seat … and watched a 2 hour movie!
Old habits are hard to die. However once the movie finished I did get to do some thinking.
And what great output it created.
I never had as much clarity on my goals as I did on that flight when I listed and reviwed each one of them.
I also wrote down 20 ideas for my business, took an inventory of all the learning resources that I purchased but had never used till now.
And I wrote a draft for this post too on that flight.
I have so much more thinking to do…I am looking forward to the next flight.
Try this fun exercise with a few others. Preferably a mix of men and women, you will see why.
I tried this exercise recently at a workshop. I was in a team with three women, I was the only male. Nobody knew one another till we assembled at the workshop.
Each one of us wrote down two truths and one lie about ourselves. Then we paired out and one listened while the other listed out the three statements. The person listening had to decide which of the three statements was the lie. Exercise over we switched turns. Then we paired with others in the team till everyone was paired with everyone else.
I was taken aback by the results.
All three women guessed my lie correctly.
I got all three women wrong!
How could that be? None had an unfair advantage like knowing each other before etc.
It was body language. The women were better at reading body language a skill that forms part of ‘Social Awareness’, one of the four major components of Emotional Intelligence.
I knew I was a dunce at reading others preferring instead to go almost exclusively by the literal meaning. Boy was I wrong. I was worse than a dunce.
The women spotted my lie accurately because they read the clues I gave out unwittingly such as the tone of my voice, the direction of my eyes etc.
A rule of thumb – if some is looking up the person is thinking, if the eyes are looking down, it is likely the person is lying.
Emotional Intelligence can be a blind spot for many. As someone put it so well “You do not know that which you do not know to look for”
Try this exercise yourself and discover your own blindspots.
