TITLE: The Elite Perception Shift That Makes Ordinary Look Extraordinary
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUrDSEaqgLA

Why can some people see things that other people can't? >> Everything everything comes from the unified field that field of pure consciousness. Everything comes from there. There's trillions and trillions of ideas. >> [music] >> And they are like fish to me. You can catch them. And sometimes you catch one you love. So, it's it's And and the thing is the the bigger the ball of consciousness, the more opportunity to catch fish. And like I said, catch them on a deeper and deeper level where there's more information in the idea. >> I can make you look, but I can't make you see. Seeing is a choice. >> [music] >> If I showed you this tattoo halfway through the process, like this, you would think it was terrible. Just random lines, no clear image. The artist already knows exactly what it's going to be. The vision is already there. So, why can he see something that everyone else misses? >> See, I have this theory, or hypothesis, whatever you want to call it, that all of the songs, films, and pieces of artwork, etc., are are already out there, just a few feet above us all. And it only takes the person that consistently cares the most about them to jump up and receive them. >> [music] >> People who can see opportunities first end up in the front of the line. Everyone who can't see ends up spending all their time trying to catch up. They chase trends. They chase luck. They look for shortcuts. Scammers love people who can't see, especially creatives. They sell you things that you don't need. Every month there's a new camera, a better camera, that's going to change your life. Only to find out that your equipment is not the problem. It's your perception. >> What we're trying to pretend, and I think what science is trying to pretend, is that great scientific advances mostly arrive through intended actions and pre-designed consequences. And simple observation shows that it's actually fat-tailed. Uh the the the process is every now and then you get spectacularly lucky, and the skill lies in do- in spotting when you've got lucky and doubling down on your luck. It's a bit like poker or something. I've got an extraordinary good hand. I really need to play this really well. I think Do you see It's not like chess at all. It's like poker, effectively. And and there's a great book, and the title is fantastic, by David Cleevely, who's a Cambridge sort of entrepreneur and uh uh and uh investor. And it's called Serendipity: It Doesn't Happen by Chance. And the point he's making, and the point that Nassim Taleb makes a lot, is that uh you can't avoid luck, you can't plan luck, but you can plan to increase your surface area exposure to upside good fortune. And one of my complaints is that when you turn something into a process or an algorithm, and you regularize it, and you make it formulaic, the hidden cost you pay is that you're no longer exposed to these lucky accidents. >> Sometimes when I meet people, I ask them this question. Can something exist without a name? Most of the time, the answer is yes. So then I tell them to prove it to me. Tell me something that exists without a name, and they never can answer the question. It's human nature for us to label things. When we find new things, we label them. That's the only way we can communicate to other human beings, through names, through descriptions and definitions. Things do need a name in order to spread. When you name something, you define it. And when you define something, you limit that thing. A book is for reading, a hammer is for nailing, a mattress is for sleeping, a cane [music] is for walking. >> Okay, there is I suppose there are different steps towards that. So, what I wouldn't agree with in that picture is that the world is clearly made of objects. And I think this is This is really Bug's analysis. analysis. That when we see objects out there in the world and they seem to be fixed, what he's saying is that well, we've done that. We've put that in the world. So, I was trying to I was looking to see if there was Actually, there's pile of books on the the table there. And I can look at it and I can see that there's um writing on the front of them and I can discern that there's a a pile of books on the table and I'm going to pick I could pick them up and start reading them. But if we had a cat in the room and they saw that pile of pile of books, they might recognize that as a handy place to sit. >> The object didn't change. The observer changed. Look at this photo. Most people see trash. Most people see a mattress. But these kids, they see a trampoline. Same object, different perception. Kids with a trampoline in their backyard would never see that mattress as being a trampoline. This brings up a better point that when you're reduced to very few things, you're forced to see. So, as a creative, you can use that as a tool. Reduce what you have to work with and you're forced to see. >> My existence is yes, I absorb the world with intensity and curiosity and awe. And in a way, it sometimes a decade later, it returns. And it returns in in a different shape. And it returns uh in a poem. Or it returns in a description of the jungle. Or it returns in the way I would write about something. Or in a film sometimes. But at the moment I I have to say yes, I'm a writer. I've always been a writer. And people are puzzled here how do I reconcile it? Very easy. I have a simple answer, simple formula now. And nothing beyond it. Films are my voyage and writing is home. So be at home right here. >> Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> Werner Herzog. >> So imagine you introduce a cane, a walking cane, to a kid for the first time. So that kid sees a cane on the ground and his first thought is, "Oh, that's a walking cane." So let's take time away and let's put the kid in a situation. So the kid is in a situation where he's being bullied by multiple kids who are trying to jump him. The cane is on the ground. The cane becomes a weapon. It's no longer a walking cane because that kid is in a situation and he doesn't have time to only rely on the purpose he was told the cane is there for. >> You know, I was just looked at at some crows flying past and looking at these marvelous locusts out of the window, you know. And a child could look at that and know that that creature is alive in really profound ways that adults now stop taking seriously. No, it's just wood. It's just wood. >> Right. >> So to go back to my own childhood of pantheism and to go back to the stories that underwrite world literature that know that you can't talk about human beings, You can't understand human beings except in conversation with the neighbors. You know, with understanding them in the full context of who we're not. You know, in our our fascination with the non-human world is that somehow we can see qualities in these other ways of being in the world that resonate with our own values. So, to look at the non-human world is also to understand interior drama. >> When you reduce time [music] and you reduce options, those things that we normally look at, that we put in the box for one purpose, become multi-purpose. >> Something that was super impactful to me, I just trained my eye to be creative limited to one thing. That's what I'm doing now with the quotes, but it's like I force do some random activity that forces your eye to sort of see things that it normally wouldn't. That's [clears throat] for sure how I'm able to sort of like in that call when I I did and just iterating through like 13 things at one time until I can quickly get to an answer. You can't do that if you're sort of casually being creative. You know, it's like if you have to like sit and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to solve this problem." You have to sort of like intertwine it with how you see the world. Like if if you want to find like new space, if you want to sort of like get to another crescendo of design and having your brain figure out how to aesthetically put together something, you have to do it often. >> As creatives, a lot of times we have to trick ourselves into seeing more options for an object. If you have 10 seconds to respond, then that came becomes a weapon. And you can do this for yourself. You can give yourself limitations. You can have one camera instead of four cameras. You can have cheap cameras instead of new cameras. And it'll force you to find a way to make that unique, to see other possibilities. Seeing isn't looking. Seeing is noticing. >> Never having seen a musical instrument, what images would come to mind when he first heard music? >> I remember thinking when I heard uh guitars playing, um it reminded me of butter. You know, and I think that was because I was, you know, there were like a lot of different jazz musicians that I heard. Um my I guess first memory, I thought of of even Wes Montgomery as I grew older to know who that was, him, was of that of of like of a warm kind of you know, buttery kind of thing and um I used to think when I when I would when I would hear the rain and um smell, you know, the the smell of rain, you know, the moisture in the air, I would think of um cornflakes. Do you know what cornflakes are in England, yeah? >> The more virgin our eyes are, the more we have to say. The most detestable habit in all modern cinema is the homage. I don't want to see another goddamn homage in anybody's movie. There are enough of them to watch your unconscious. Now, of course you must see films and you must see great films. I say don't be marinated. Don't soak yourself in films. Now, the argument against what I'm saying is that the world is full. All the best young directors are soaked in films. And they have managed to rise above that and to be remarkable cineastes. So, you are You are in the presence of a speaker who is not only paradoxical, but confused. >> A hammer is for putting a nail on the wall. You have a nail that popped out the wall. You don't have a hammer. You don't feel like going to the store. You go outside in your front yard and you pick up a stone and you hammer the nail in. Then you figured out you never needed a hammer. Sometimes we rely on other things or we say we need other things cuz it takes the pressure off of us to actually get it done. >> When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because when you're sure, you're not moving and reality is always moving, right? If if you've arrived at a definitive, irrefutable point of view, it's because your point of view is stationary and that's not going to help you survive in the world where all points of view are constantly moving. >> Now, don't get me wrong. Categories are important. Our brain puts things in categories to conserve energy so we don't have to think about things as hard to know what they are, to define them. So, we put them in categories. We have plants that we can eat for food in a category. We have plants that are poisonous in a category. We put weeds in a category even though throughout history people have turned weeds into food and then we learn it's not a weed at all. But, it is in a category that we accept because our brain is conserving energy. You can't move around the world defining everything you look at. But, of course, efficiency has a cost. We lose our ability to redefine it. This is why creatives are so important because they have the ability to redefine, to reframe, to recontextualize. But, sometimes that thing that helps us understand the world, categorizing, also makes us blind to new opportunities. As a creative, you have to be able to turn this off and on. It's really what makes you special. Most people think creativity and seeing is seeing something new. I don't really think that's what it is. I think creativity is seeing something old in a different way. >> One of the things I really love when you're particularly when you're creating backstory for a character is I often feel like oh yeah, that's how it happened. It feels like discovery rather than creation. That often happens to me. And sometimes that happens to me with plot. I will hit a snag. And I'll sit back I'll mentally sit back. And then it comes and you say oh yeah, of course that's how it happened. And it but it feels like discovery. It doesn't feel as though I made it up. It feels as though I waited and then I and then I saw it and it was there to be just I know this sounds very weird. >> A hammer is one category. A heavy object is more categories. The object never changes. The frame changes. This is why your vision looks crazy to other people. Your vision looks like the beginning of that tattoo. They can't see what you see. That's normal. If they could see your vision clearly, they wouldn't need you. >> What is that process? >> you know, you um you're going along and there's no idea and no no no idea no idea and then boom. It's like I you could say a big movie screen in your head in your brain. This idea comes on the screen and you see it, you hear it, you feel it, you know it all at once. And then you go and write it down. And you write it down, I say, with words so that when you read that those words again later, that idea will come back in full. And it's amazing how many words sometimes it takes to um you know, describe that idea, all the things that came in just like an instant. So, you write it down in such a way that it comes back when you read the words again. >> If you want to support the channel, there's a donation link in the top of the description and pinned in the comments. If you like the channel, [music] please subscribe, hit the notification bell, or become a member. >> Be a parted hand of the king.