A Noisy Life

We live in a ‘noisy world’, and the stuff that draws our attention is not always what we should be paying attention to.

Take a moment to try out this test from the field of psychology. Don’t read the words in the test. Name the colours printed as fast as possible.

Go!!!

Are you surprised by your answers?

If, like most people, your impulse was to read “yellow, blue, orange….” Noise has just interfered with your perception.

When you look at the words, you see both their colour and their meaning. Your brain experiences a conflict and needs to choose when presented with these two pieces of evidence. When faced with this confusion, it defaults to what you have been taught; the meaning of a word is more important than the colour. This exercise suggests that we are not always in control of what we pay attention to. Noise interferes.

All parts of our lives involve noise that detracts us from paying attention to what is not apparent. It might take a lot of unlearning habits that have been implanted in our heads from our past. Still, it is possible to filter out the predictable in our lives and pay attention to what is not predictable or easily noticed. Try this new way of looking at your world for the next thirty days, and you will be able to see things in your life that require your immediate attention to help you grow as a person.