You’re standing in your bedroom, folded clothes in hand.  You open the dresser drawer to put them in, and they won’t fit.  You stare at the clothes and then at the drawer.  And then you ask yourself, “What if I folded these clothes differently?”  All of a sudden, all the clothes fit in the same space where they didn’t fit before.  And you ask yourself,

“Why didn’t I think of that before?”

Something like that happened to me the other day.  I kept almost tripping over these big boxes in my basement.  What was in them?  Wine. From a wine club I joined in a fit of enthusiasm on a trip to Sonoma and Napa a few years ago.  I had cancelled my membership, and still had a lot of wine left.  In boxes taking up a lot of space on the basement floor.

Most of the time I barely noticed them.  I just stepped around them.  It was like they were a permanent fixture.  And then I was cleaning some other stuff out and it was as if I really SAW those boxes.  I stared them down, and then said to myself, “Why don’t I just get a wine rack?!?”

So I ordered one from Amazon.  It came 2 days later.  And by putting that wine rack in the basement, I was able to eliminate 5 boxes from my basement floor!  All it took was for me to see.  Notice.  Once I did, I was able to find a solution almost immediately.

If you listened to podcast episode 087, you heard me talk about the 6 secrets to getting past your upper limit. The first was “Observe and Question”.  The sixth was “Default to Action”.  And that’s exactly what I did here.  I saw, I asked a question, and I took immediate action.

(c) Kathleen Thompson From this……

(c) Kathleen Thompson …to This!

How often do we not notice?  Or maybe only kind-of-notice?  Like me kind-of-tripping over the boxes when I went down to the basement?  How often do we pay attention to the point of questioning?  And then – even when we do notice – do we take action right away?

There is nothing like immediate action to reinforce your decision.  To change your habit.  To trigger meaningful change.  Like me buying the wine rack.  Or finding a different way to store my scarves so they don’t just end up on the closet floor.  Or starting with 15 minutes of vocal warm-ups every day.

Is there something you’ve maybe kind-of-noticed?  Tripped over?  And not really seen?  Why not look around today and see what you see?  Observe.  Question.  And take action.  You’ll be amazed at what you do.  And it could be so simple you’ll ask yourself, “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

If you do notice something today, why not share in the comments?