I was in another training class this week and found this exercise very interesting. Our brain really does play tricks on us. We all have a blind spot when it comes to seeing certain things. No matter how hard we focus and pay attention to the details, we still miss things. Is your brain tricking you? Take the test and see.

 

Read the following sentence, straight through one time.

 

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC

STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

EXPERIENCE OF MANY YEARS.

 

Now go through it again one more time and pick out the number of “F” s you see.

How many “F”s did you count?

 

Did you see 2? Or 3? Or 4? Or 5?

 

Most people will see 3. There are actually 6 “F”s in this sentence. Why did you miss them? We often don’t correctly process the word “OF” for two reasons. First, the letter F usually makes the “f” sound, like in “fax”. However, in the word “of”, it makes a “v” sound. Second, you have probably read the word “of” so many times in your life that you process it as a space word, or non-important while reading, like “the”. Over-looking the second the “F” because of the sound is a blind spot of your brain. However, after seeing the solution, you see it every time now.

The same thing happens to us with advertising and purchasing. About a decade or so ago, we purchased a silver GMC Yukon. It was the only one I had ever seen. Until we went to pick up our kids at middle school in the car line. There were no less than 8 silver Yukons in the parent line. So many that often kids would jump into the wrong parents car, which was always some fun. Did everyone purchase a silver Yukon when I did or did I just not pay attention to how many silver Yukons people owned? Yes, we all have a brain blind spot until we pay attention to the details.

Think about a sale you missed because you missed an important detail. Were you focused or was your brain tricking you?

“The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals and you can’t let yourself be beat because of lack of effort”.—Michael Jordan

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Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, grandfather of 2, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, employee benefit specialist, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger, author and team leader with over 30 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.