A very important ability for any human to succeed in life is the ability to sense the environment while on the journey towards achieving his/her desired goals. This ability is called as Sensory Acuity. This ability is important for the following reasons:
- It helps us in knowing whether we are getting closer towards our goals. i.e. to serve as a feedback mechanism for us.
- It helps us to spot problems in advance, before they hit us. If we know what’s coming our way, we can change our approach.
- It helps us to predict the behavior of people based on their body language. Remember that people can lie and manipulate us, however the human body is not designed to lie. It usually reveals the truth, provided one is able to read body language.
At a very young age, humans are known to have very strong sensory acuity. Children scan the environment completely and can read the body language of a parent and know in advance what their response is going to be. Also, at a young age, most of the sensory organs are very sensitive to various stimuli. Our sensory inputs come in through our eyes, ears, nose, skin, i.e. touch and taste. It is said that we also have a pineal gland that acts as an alternate sensory organ.
As we grow up, our sensory organs lose their ability to sense and very often that is because we do not use these.
For example, we humans lose our peripheral vision as we become adults. You’d remember that in school we were taught that our eyes have ‘Rod cells’ and ‘Cone cells’ (One type gives us Focal vision and the other Peripheral vision) . However, over the years, we get conditioned to just focus, focus and focus, thereby losing our peripheral vision to a large extent. I have read somewhere that focal vision is just 10-20% and remaining 80% is peripheral vision.
So, this means that as adults, we are probably using only 20% of our vision and sensory ability. In fact, we lose a lot of other sensory abilities. for example, do you know that humans have the ability to see without using eyes. We are able to get visual input even from our skin and other sensory organs. A course offered these days, called Mid Brain Activation, can help children (in the age bracket 5-15 Years) to develop this vision. My daughter who has attended this course can see with her feet. if she is completely blindfolded and you place a document under her feet, she is able to read it perfectly.
What I’m trying to tell you is that with damaged sensory acuity, we are unable to read our environment properly and that reduces our prospects of achieving our goals. We have actually become so distracted that we end up losing 80% of what’s happening around us and again out of what all goes inside, how much we are able to decode and process is probably another aspects that we need to consider.
I suggest that henceforth, whenever you are doing anything, immerse yourself completely in any task. Do not engage in Multi-tasking . Actually, we have a completely incorrect understanding of Multitasking and what we end up doing is Multiple tasks together, which simply divides our attention thereby reducing sensory inputs. When listening to people look at them, and observe their body using your peripheral vision. observe their eyes, posture, gestures and Skin.
You will receive valuable inputs that will guide you towards working out your approach and thereby lead you towards success.
