This is a true story that happened to me some years ago.

In the town we used to live was a car garage situated on the main road. You couldn’t miss it. We were living there for 2 years when one day as I drove by that garage with my family I suddenly saw it. There it was a Volkswagen beetle on a pole about 6 feet high off the ground. “Look at that” I exclaimed with awe. “Look at what?” came the reply. “There is a car on the pole” I said “this is amazing”. My wife and son burst into roaring laughter, one that usually characterizes amazement and disbelief. Well, as the laughter subsided they managed to somehow explain to me that this Beetle has been on the pole since we moved into the town and we have been passing it every day. This really shocked me and caused me to think about the real meaning of openness and creativity.

I was puzzled and astonished by the fact that ‘something in me’ ignored ‘something outside of me’ that is so obvious, for so long.

This incident has become for me a life focusing story, which developed to a personal & external training program revolving around some basic questions:

What else is out there that is in front of my eyes that I don’t see? What is it that determines the scope of my vision? Is my vision determined by what I know and accept? What determines what I accept or reject? How limited am I by the way I think? How can I learn to think out of my box?

Over years of training many professionals all over the world, I came to realize that indeed almost every person I dealt with had their blind spots, their own ‘closed captions’ syndrome, that prevented them from seeing the bigger picture and consequently limited their range of success.

That added another challenge to my list of challenges and that one seemed to me the biggest of them all: It is one thing coming to see your own blind spots and doing something about it, but it is another thing altogether to show other people their blind spots, without causing them to become hard and resistant to change.

This is ongoing challenge which I always try to improve and refine and to some good measure of success.

What I would wish to offer you in the way of season’s greetings and well wishes for the New Year is the following:

1. Learn to ask questions about everything particularly the 3 “can opener” questions as I call them, which my creative thinking training revolve around:
   • What
   • Why
   • How
2. Learn to listen without dismissing what others tell you, even if you don’t agree.
3. Develop curiosity and hunger for learning and training and never think “you have arrived”.
4. Refrain from negative judgment and criticism and develop a positive attitude.
5. Regard change as opportunity, not a threat (that will naturally happen if you succeed in point 4)

I hope that this lesson of the Beetle on the Pole is of some value to you and I thank you for your feedback and for the opportunity to conduct training seminars for your organization.

May you do well and help others succeed!

Eli Harari
The Thinking Coach