observation we all know it to be the bedrock and foundation of deduction while I've
talked about it in the past I want to talk about it once again to sort of
recap and reiterate old information in a more concise way and to bring new
insight of things that I've learned since I spoke about it last in the past
we have talked about two things that are vital to building the foundation of
observation mindfulness and a simple exercise system for your brain
everyone knows that your brain adapts if you do something enough times eventually
your brain will form neurological pathways to make the process of
performing that task easier thus conserving resources and promoting
efficiency it would be inefficient to do this where everything a person will do
in their life because there is no guarantee that person will do it again
thus remembering everything and making a neurological pathway for everything is
inefficient because there's no guarantee it will be useful this is why practice
and repetition are necessary for mastery of any skill this was the concept one of
my old martial arts instructors hammered home one thing that he would
say something that he learned from his master was practice doesn't make perfect
it makes permanent and for the most part this is true if you practice wrong you
will learn wrong if you practice by throwing a thousand punches but your
bone alignment is off in your form and technique are just terrible well then
whenever you're to throw a punch at something you're just going to end up
hurting yourself in an ironic turn of events putting all that effort
into learning something the wrong way will just make it that much harder for
you to reteach yourself the right way this isn't so much a problem when
training observation more when training your logical faculties however the basic
principle is that a person without observation training is likely going to
be habitually unobservant hence the need for training the particular training
system that I presented related to general observations first focus on
observing the geography structure and composition of your environment and the
relation of objects in your environment to your own position then once you have
built that up as a habit add on to that by observing not only the position of
objects in your environment but their details as well things such as the color
texture material etc finally once that has become habitual begin to observe the
functions of objects and how those objects relate to one another the
bookshelf is designed to have books on it the chair is for sitting comfortably and its
place in front of the desk thus their relation is that whomever sits in the
chair utilizes the desk as well does the process of observation leads
nicely into the process of deduction if you want to see the full playlist from
my observation 101 series click that info card right up there moving on though
the other thing that we talked about quite a bit later was the concept of
mindfulness mindfulness is a mindset a mindset that revolves around the concept
of self-awareness knowing where you are when you are and who you are in relation
to the world around you at any given moment in an introspective sense knowing
who you are allows for clarity of thought and singularity of purpose being
bogged down by cares worries and self-doubt clouds the mind and robs you
of your finite attention making it more difficult to focus but that is more
something for you to figure out on your own I'm an educational channel not a
self-help channel here to give you life hacks tips and tricks if you want advice
on introspection I would recommend asking the people who actually know you
to hold up a sort of mirror to you to show you yourself from their perspective that
is something that I'm simply not equipped to do in a general video made
for no one in particular I feel like I need to clarify I have nothing against
self-help channels just as long as I stay within the bounds of giving helpful
general tips but not promoting that advice as a hard-and-fast absolute rule
because you can give good general advice that applies to a lot of people but when
you get too specific that's when you start leading certain people astray who that
advice is going to work for them because everybody's different however in a
practical sense this entails observing yourself not just your surroundings
being mindful of where you are helps your mind to naturally gather
information about your environment which is why my first step in my observation
training program as it were is to observe the placement of objects in
space in your position in space relative to them now at this point you might have
noticed that the ideas use your mind's natural functions to your advantage
rather than go against how the mind naturally
works by setting specific albeit broad objectives for your mind you're priming
your brain to allocate resources to that objective rather than focusing on some
obscure concept of observing everything in general following this trend a great
way to prime your brain to both map out your surroundings and take into account
your position if you constantly plan out your movements before you make them
visualize yourself maneuvering through your environment in the most efficient
manner possible as you can imagine this task involves
taking obstructions and obstacles into account thus you'll observe the objects
in your environment because you have mapped out your movements once you go to
actually maneuver through your environment the plan that you've already of
devised will be playing sort of in the background and you will more gracefully
move to your environment without much thought at all this is because you have
already put some thought into it before you even did it this allows your mind to
focus on other things while you move this sounds like a long process but it
really doesn't take more than a few seconds as you get used to it and with a
little bit of practice you can constantly formulate plans you walk from
your room of course the more you do it the faster you become another aspect of
mindfulness is the ability to focus and be absorbed in the current moment with
unwavering attention and that is certainly something many of us have lost
touch with what with all the distractions modern life has to throw us
however there's a simple meditative exercise when you can do to foster
mindfulness and will make the process of training your observational skills much
easier in fact this technique is so well known that I wouldn't be surprised if
you've already heard of it in your study of deduction and observation it is
simply called mindfulness meditation and only requires about 10 to 15 minutes of
your day you don't have to sit in a traditional meditative stance although
some studies have shown that it has its benefits but you can just as easily do
it sitting in a chair or even lying down just be careful not to fall asleep if
you do it lying down and make sure you won't be distracted by anything if
you're sitting at a desk or something close your eyes and focus on your
breathing feel every aspect of breathing how the
Swift cool air curves at the edges of your nostrils as you breathe
I would expand your lungs and fills your body take careful notice of the way your
lung is deflate as your diaphragm relaxes* and the warm breath is pushed
out of your nostrils if you prefer you can even do box breathing where you
breathe in hold your breath for a four count and then after exhaling wait
another four count before inhaling again to keep track of the time you can set a
timer on your phone preferably not an obnoxious own alarm sound we want to
smoothly exit out of the meditative state and using your phone the primary
antagonist of our ability to focus is a means to help you train your focus has
a nice ring of poetic justice to it it should be noted that this is an exercise
that should remain a part of your daily routine if you just stop doing it you
will start to lose the benefits that you were reaping while you were doing it so
don't just stop after you become proficient at observation you won't be
doing yourself a favor so to recap in order to train your
observational skills you need to begin with a simple training exercise starting
with observing things which fall into a broad nonspecific category and to aid
your observational training daily mindfulness meditation will help your
self-awareness and ability to focus both vital to observation and deduction
last video I said that observation has always been my weak point in deduction
and something I had to work on really hard to develop so now I pass it on to
you what would you say your weak point deduction would you say that you're bad
at observing like I was or perhaps you don't have a good grasp on the
application and flow of logic or is it that your knowledge base is insufficient
click on that info card up there to take a survey and let me know that way I can
see more of what the majority of you are struggling in and adjust the flow of my
content accordingly don't worry it's all anonymous with that thank you all so much for
watching if you're new here and you like what you saw be to subscribe also if you
want to see me make a video on some more observation training exercises
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questions in the comments down below with that all you aspiring detectives
out there Arrivederci