I remember sitting in the backseat of my dad’s 1971 Chrysler Newport (we used to call it “the tank”) on those long drives from Round Rock, Texas, to Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1980s to visit my grandparents and cousins.
My brother Donald and I would play this game called Slug Bug.
The rules were simple… every time you spotted a Volkswagen Beetle you earned the right to punch the person sitting next to you in the arm while yelling “Slug bug!” and then you would name the color of the car.
Looking back, I’m not sure my brother loved the game as much as I did. 😊
But I do remember this: before we started playing, I barely noticed the VW bugs on the road.
What fascinated me was that the moment we learned the game, we started seeing VW Bugs everywhere.
Nothing changed on the road. Everything changed in my brain.
There is a part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), and it acts like a filter. Think of it as the brain’s search engine. Once you tell it what’s important, it starts finding evidence of it everywhere.
That’s exactly what happened with those Volkswagen Bugs.
There’s a story I tell in my new book Joyful Prayerful Thankful called “Gold Miners” where I ask a simple question: what do gold miners look for? The answer is… gold, (duh!). The gold miners come across plenty of rock and dirt along the way — but because they’re not looking for those things, they toss them aside and keep searching.
We tend to find what we’re looking for.
If we wake up expecting a hard day, your brain will helpfully highlight every piece of evidence that confirms it. The aggressive driver. The annoying comment by a coworker (or family member). The meeting that ran too long (again). See? Told you.
But… if we are willing to flip the lens… the same day has a different inventory. The parking spot that opened up right when you needed it. The text from a friend (out of nowhere, that made you smile). The moment that was small but good.
The Volkswagen Bugs were always there. I just wasn’t looking for them.
Same road. Different eyes.
I still think about that black Chrysler. And forty-plus years later, I still feel the instinct to call out “slug bug” every time I see a VW Bug.
Old habits are hard to break.
Which is exactly the point.
The habits of the eye become the habits of the heart.
What you practice looking for, you eventually practice living. So here’s the question I want to leave you with — the same one I have to ask myself regularly: What are you training your eyes to spot?
Because you will find it. You always do.
