My partner, Kelly, was frantic that she’d lost her credit card.

She’d already searched her wallet, purse, backpack, and jacket–all the usual suspects turning up nothing–when she remembered her jeans. They’d been removed and tossed onto the top shelf of the closet in favour of sweat pants almost the moment we arrived home from lunch, where she had last used the missing card.

As I pulled them down off the shelf, a card slipped from the pocket and skittered across the ground.

Success!

As the card settled, however, we realized it was not the credit card, but her driver’s license. The pockets of the jeans were otherwise empty.

Having thoroughly examined seemingly every nook, cranny, and surface in our home, we prepared to head out and retrace our steps of the day, already resigned to the fact that our search was likely to be unsuccessful.

As we headed for the door, however, I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling.

Following the hunch, I returned to the closet and reached up to the top shelf where the jeans had been resting.

The shelf was juuuuuust a few inches above eye level, so while I could see most of the contents of the shelf–even the 3-inch high ironing board that was folded and stored there–I couldn’t see the shelf’s actual surface.

I reached up and ran my hands over the shelf.

Nothing.

Damn.

Then I reached further and felt my way across the ironing board.

Almost immediately, my fingers brushed up against what could only be the missing card. I pulled it down, elated at having solved the mystery.

Not only had I solved the mystery, however.

In finding the bank card where and how I did, I’d stumbled onto an important type of blind spot that not only keeps us from seeing lost credit cards, but also many of the biggest opportunities available to us in our creative work.

The Direction of Our Gaze Determines the Opportunities We See

We tend to navigate the world with our eyes aimed either at or below our own eye level.

When it comes to moving through our physical surroundings, this makes sense, as it keeps us from getting tripped up on the many obstacles we encounter on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, however, we often maintain this downward-looking perspective with us when navigating the world of opportunities and ideas.

This severely limits our potential.

The ideas and opportunities at or below our eye level are those we are already equal to. Should we choose to pursue them, we’d be capable of achieving them with our existing skillset, resources, and network. In other words, they don’t require much–if anything–in the way of stretching ourselves.

That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with these easily accessible opportunities.

In fact, we’d be foolish not to pick much of the low-hanging fruit that surrounds us.

The problem is that the opportunities and ideas at or below our eye level are likely the same opportunities and ideas almost everyone around us is also staring at.

Which makes differentiating ourselves and our work difficult.

This near-ubiquitous focus on the easily visible, however, also presents us with an opportunity.

Because if we’re willing to embrace some uncertainty and stretch ourselves just a little, we can choose to raise our gaze and reach into a whole world of opportunities and ideas that have been largely ignored or avoided by our competitors.

The challenge, however, is that despite them sitting right in front of us, we often can’t see them.

Two Reasons We Miss Opportunities

While some of the opportunities above our line of sight are firmly out of our (current) reach, many, like Kelly’s credit card sitting out in the open on the shelf are close enough to touch.

Despite the relative accessibility of these ideas and opportunities, however, we’re prevented from reaching for them for one of two reasons.

1. Lack of Certainty

In many cases, we can clearly see the opportunities sitting on the shelf above our head.

We’re often kept from reaching for and pulling them down, however, by our lack of certainty about what else might be hiding on the shelf.

Perhaps our lizard brain calls to mind images of snakes and spiders and other unseen threats hiding beyond our line of sight, ready to strike the moment we reach our hand up.

Or perhaps we simply can’t imagine these opportunities being that easy to access. And so instead of seizing them immediately, we sit and ponder and second guess ourselves.

2. Misplaced Certainty

In many cases, however, as with Kelly’s missing card, we’re kept from reaching for opportunities on the shelves above our heads simply because we’ve convinced ourselves the shelves are empty.

The reason for our certainty is what I think of as Top Shelf Blindspots.

These blindspots exist in the thin slivers of space that are blocked from our view when looking toward a surface slightly above our head.

These blindspots are accompanied by a healthy dose of irony.

When looking up at a shelf well above our heads we’re fully aware that we can’t see most of its contents.

But the closer to eye level the shelf is, the more of its contents we can see. And when the 99% of the shelf space we can see appears to be empty, our brains fill in the remaining 1% of a gap in our perception and we become certain that the shelf is entirely empty.

It doesn’t take much of a height difference to conceal opportunities of incredible value, either.

A shelf just half an inch above eye level provides enough of a Top Shelf Blindspot to hide a credit card… or perhaps a gold ingot, or stacks of $100 bills, or countless other objects of value.

In fact, while we spend most of our time chasing the big, obvious opportunities and ideas, I’d argue that many if not most of the truly impactful ones are much more modest in their size and packaging.

If we’re going to spot and take advantage of the opportunities existing in our Top Shelf Blindspots, then, we often need someone with a little more height who can clearly see the contents on the shelf for what they are to give us a nudge to reach out and take hold of the opportunities in front of us.

A few days after the incident with the credit card, this is what my friend (and CW reader) Alina helped me do.

Others Can See What We Can’t

We were walking to a coffee shop for a co-working session, catching each other up on our weeks.

I had made some solid progress and was feeling pretty good about my updates, especially at having turned down an opportunity that, while excellent, felt like a distraction from what I felt I needed to be focusing on.

I expected Alina to be proud of my judgment and boundary setting.

After a pregnant pause, she responded instead with, “I just want to shake you right now.”

Over the next 10 minutes, she proceeded to school me on all of the many opportunities lying out in the open, above my eye level but within easy reach, which I was currently missing… And had potentially just turned down.

I was dumbfounded.

Over the next few days, I spent a lot of time thinking about the opportunities Alina had outlined.

But I probably spent more time thinking about what had kept me from seeing the opportunities in the first place.

What was it exactly that had been blocking my view?

Understanding The Shelf

If we imagine opportunities above our eye level to be resting on one or more progressively higher shelves which block our view of the opportunities resting on them, it helps to know what the shelves are made of.

The ideas and opportunities Alina had opened my eyes to involved taking my existing skills, knowledge, and products and applying them to a new audience.

The audience in question, however, was one with which I had almost no network, no knowledge of their specific problems or workflows, and almost no working experience.

These three traits: A lack of connections, lack of specific (or even general) knowledge, and lack of experience almost always form the basic frame of the shelves. But without being filled in, these frames don’t do much in the way of blocking our view.

Unfortunately for us, we ourselves are more than willing to fill in those frames with a thick layer of our own assumptions.

In my case, I had been well aware that this alternative audience for my work existed. I’d even done some limited work with some members of this group in the past, albeit in a slightly different capacity.

I assumed that my past clients were the outliers, however.

I assumed that to work with the vast majority of this audience I would need specialized skills and knowledge beyond what I already possessed.

I assumed I would need connections to insiders that would be difficult or impossible to get.

But the assumptions didn’t stop there.

I assumed I wouldn’t enjoy working with them, and that the expectations would be more than I could meet, and that the effort of accessing this audience wouldn’t be worth the return.

Perhaps most of all, I assumed I would surely be found out as an impostor.

When you think about it, what is Impostor Syndrome, but a series of assumptions we make about the expectations of others and how we measure up?

Stacked together, these assumptions had built up a thick, opaque shelf, completely obscuring my view of the opportunities lying out in the open on the other side of them.

Until at least, someone with a little more height, and a little more perspective came along and gave me the boost I needed to help me see clearly the opportunities waiting for me to reach out and take them.

So What to Do with This?

The first and most important step is to acknowledge that Top Shelf Blindspots exist.

This means being aware that in most cases, the most meaningful, impactful (and potentially lucrative) opportunities are lying out in the open, often just above our eye level, waiting to be picked up.

To see them, we need to access some height and its accompanying perspective.

To do this, we have two options.

The first is to wait to grow ourselves.

While our physical height may be limited by our genetics, there’s no limit to our metaphorical potential for growth and the perspective that comes with it.

But this growth can take years.

What’s more, growth and the accompanying perspective related to one topic, niche or industry often doesn’t transfer over to other aspects of our lives.

And growth of any kind isn’t guaranteed.

This means that if we’re serious about filling in our Top Shelf Blindspots and take advantage of the opportunities hiding in them, we can’t rely on ourselves.

Instead, we need to make a habit of seeking out people in spaces related to and adjacent to ours who are taller than us. People like Alina who can give us a boost and point out all the opportunities they see lying out in the open but which are currently blocked from our view.

While we have no way of knowing exactly where our Top Shelf Blindspots exist, we can be sure that we are surrounded by them.

Knowing this, we can choose to grope around, hoping our fingers randomly land on some opportunity or another.

Or, we can choose to surround ourselves with people who have the height and perspective to guide us to those opportunities we can’t see, but which are lying out in the open, just waiting for us to grab them.

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