Failing to notice

I just finished a book about self deception and the Christian life entitled  ”I told me so” by Gregg A. Ten Elshof.   The book discusses how we as sinful humans are prone to deceive ourselves and insulate our vain imaginations from reality and truth.  One of the chapters deals with attention management and procrastination.  It seems as though one of the most common strategies for self deception over the long haul is to control what comes into our minds (i.e. focus our attention on what we want to agree with or disagree with).   This kind of attention management is a two sided coin, on the one side we can deceive ourselves by avoiding attention to evidence against any belief that our well being is propped up on (example: avoiding all evidence suggesting that I am a terrible singer).  On the other hand, we can direct  too much critical attention to such evidence that opposes our cherished belief (example: focusing all my attention critically on all such evidence suggesting that I am a terrible singer so that I can prove otherwise).  Either way we are deceived.  Consider the following words.

“The range of what we think and do

Is limited by what we fail to notice

And because we fail to notice

THAT we fail to notice

There is little we can do

To change

Until we notice

How failing to notice

Shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

-Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception

What are you failing to notice in your life?

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