At work, we’ve noticed this phenomenon that sometimes after seeing something too many times, you end up going ‘blind’.  You don’t notice spelling or grammar mistakes after seeing it a few times since your brain has adapted to seeing it too many times and just adapts to the error and sees it as normal.

This happens in life too.  Sometimes we adapt to situations after the initial exposure.  We start turning a blind eye although our first impressions had noted something unusual.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the power or our initial impressions often being right in his book “Blink”.  I was reminded of this when a friend of mine met another friend of mine over the weekend.  She remarked something that struck a chord with me as it was my initial impression as well but with familiarity and more interaction, my opinion changed.  The interesting thing was that my first impression was the most accurate to that person/situation.

This is a lesson to ask ourselves what our first impression on any given subject might be and what it might change or evolve to overtime, but to look at what or why that difference exists.  Somewhere in between the truth exists, and you can prevent yourself from going ‘blind’.