I have this concept that likely has some long scientific name and explanation but I just call it the yellow car principle. It is fairly simple. You may not really pay attention to the number of cars on the road that are yellow (.2%, or 2 out of 1000 per Google), but you know they are fairly rare. That said, if you buy a yellow car, or even just in reading this yellow cars come to the front of your mind, for some time after that, yellow cars will seem more common. That is, you’ll see them more often. Now obviously, buying a yellow car only puts one more yellow car on the road, and thinking about yellow cars puts no more on the road. So seeing more yellow cars is a mental thing. It is not that there are more yellow cars on the road.
This yellow car principle came to my mind recently when I picked up a cotter pin off the street while running (it was me running, not the cotter pin or the street). Oddly, this occurred while I was listening to Merle Haggard sing Holding Things Together , which is of course what cotter pins do. I see lots of things on the road when I run. Washers, bolts, change — even found a dollar bill last week — but I don’t recall ever seeing a cotter pin. but since then I have seen picked up two more (neither while listening to Merle).
By this time, you’re wondering where the hell this is going. So am I. But I guess the point, if there is one, is this. How might I change my life if I preloaded it with good things instead of bad, good news instead of bad news, stories of accomplishment and success instead of failure? And what’s the harm in engaging in that experiment?
It occurs to me... 