There’s a thing called the red car phenomenon. Or maybe it’s red sweaters. I can’t remember, but the concept is the same either way: you buy a red car (or sweater) and for the next few weeks you’re seeing other red cars/sweaters everywhere. Like everyone got on the bandwagon and did exactly what you just did.
Of course, what’s really happened is that your brain is tuned into the red car frequency and just brings more of them to your attention than normal. They were there before, you just didn’t care.
From my journal last week, paraphrased: “weird that I saw a blog post about [new software feature X] on the same day that I went to that sales page that used [sneaky new technique Y], just one day after I reactivated [campaign Z]. That can’t be a coincidence.”
Now, just to be clear, I wasn’t paying homage to The Secret there; I was fully aware of the red car phenomenon. My brain has been tuned to look for certain dots that it can connect to get me closer to my goals, and I’m seeing more of them every week (particularly as my goals get better defined, funny that.)
There’s an old saying about how the harder you work, the luckier you get, and it’s got a lot to do with red car syndrome, combined with having built up certain assets and infrastructure over time that you’re able to deploy rapidly when those car shaped dots start to appear in a line so simple that a two year old could connect them. A two year old with your mental training, anyway.
But that’s the trick: seeing the dots is going to drive you mad if you don’t have the means to do anything about them or the guts to drop other serious work to pursue them. Fair warning: implementation strategies are probably going to feature prominently this week.
Photo by skippyjon
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