Have you ever wondered why people can't agree on the facts? You live in the same house, experience the same situation, but your kids (or parents) seem to have seen something entirely different. Or, two religious sects can't agree on what the same words in the same religious text mean. It's the same "facts" but seen in entirely different ways.

The first episode in a series on PBS called "The Brain" that begins to explain why that happens. It seems that, in order to work faster, your brain has developed the power to pick out the few things that are different and then use images in memory to fill in the rest of the picture - similar to the way your computer uses past webpage images to load pages faster. But, just as with a computer, it takes time to process all this information. The program demonstrated that it takes two tenths of a second for a sprinter to react to the sound of a starter's pistol, and even more time to process visual images. Based on those simple facts, can you imagine how difficult it is to teach a child to clap in unison with you?

In sales I'm sure you can remember how frustrating it was when you and your prospect were clearly not on the same page. No matter how carefully you painted the picture, what you painted was not what they saw. That's because you saw a picture based on your history, they saw one based on theirs. What if you had asked them to paint the picture and you tried to see what they were seeing? Perhaps you could then suggest changes to their picture that would move it closer to your vision.

Find a way to watch the series because you will see the world in a different way. That much I can guarantee.