NOTICE


Andy Andrews (2009). The Noticer.


A story...Jones is an old brown man with white hair and blue eyes that appears to people when they are in great need. He uses questions and sprinkles wisdom to facilitate  positive transformation. 

Each chapter presents a different character(s) with a problem that Jones is able to assist with. The theme running through all of the chapters is NOTICING, getting perspective on  "problems."

Some of the particular wisdom includes: 

1)focus on gratitude for whatever you focus on increases,

2)all people are either in crisis, coming out of crisis, or headed for crisis so if you're in crisis now, that's ok, it's normal, 

3)we need to learn to speak the love language of others for them to feel loved--animal analogies apply to people: dogs love praise (words of affirmation), cats love touch (all forms of touch), canaries want someone to listen to them sing (quality time), and goldfish want to be fed and have their bowl clean (acts of service) [these love languages the author recognizes come from Gary Chapman's Love Languages book, but the animal analogies are unique to the author], 

4)your history doesn't control you, choose...

5)worry is a misuse of creative energy, 

6)wisdom is seeing into the future the consequences of your choices, everything you do matters, forever, to the nth generation, and

7)small stuff makes up the big stuff, do the right thing and do it well.


As with most advice giving, the individual needs to be receptive (in a need state of mind) to fully receive the advice...and with every piece of advice, there is a caveat, e.g., the small stuff makes up the big stuff so we should do all small things to the best of our ability--taken to the extreme, this creates an obsessive-compulsive personality...yes, when we create something important, we should make it the best we can, but at some point, we need to stop and move on to the next thing...to not get stuck in trying to make EVERYTHING perfect.

 The main point of NOTICING and getting perspective on our "problems" is probably a good thing...like being mindful, expanding wide to see the big picture, but we also need to zoom in to see the details of what is right in front of us. 

For me the bigger lesson in looking at life is: 

NOTICE BOTH/AND (instead of either/or)

ZOOM OUT WITH YOUR TELESCOPE 

                          AND 

ZOOM IN WITH YOUR MICROSCOPE

...don't look in one or the other and think "that's all there is."




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