Please note important addendum to this post *
Have you ever heard the expression, “You can’t see for looking?” I have, and so have many people I know who’ve complained about this strange phenomenon. How many times have you searched over and over in vain for something where you are sure you put it, and then to your surprise and consternation, there it is? It’s almost as if it’s been put there by some invisible hand, or has by some weird trick, hidden itself from your view and now presents itself to your consciousness? How come you didn’t see it there before? So you wonder if someone is playing games with you, or perhaps you put it down to some poltergeist (playful ghost) or spirit activity, if you believe in that sort of thing.
However you try to explain it, it’s still rather confounding isn’t it? I’ve heard many people ask, “How is it possible to not see something right in front of me, then all of a sudden I see it,?” Or when someone else points to it, saying, “There it is,” and we gasp in shock of recognition …it was there all the time!’
Or, worse yet, no matter how we search, we haven’t been able to find it, ever! What’s it all about?
What I’ve learned about this phenomenon is that it isn’t only common, it often serves a purpose: You might want to argue that by asking, “What on earth kind of purpose could that be considering how frustrating and often time consuming as well as inconvenient these occurrences are?”
Good question. However, are we dealing with rational events here? Or is there some other strange and heretofore unknown explanation?
There isn’t a reliable method of finding the cause in every case of these mysterious happenings. For they occur in every day life to just about every person, randomly. My many years of investigation into the paranormal and having had so many people come to me for hypnosis to help them find lost objects or money, and understanding a great deal about how the mind and brain work, I have a been able to unveil at least some of the mysteries behind the lost or disappearing and sometimes surprisingly reappearing belongings.
First of all I want to address a not so unusual phenomenon based my own client case histories, and explain their occurrences.
Case example number one: A police officer came to me with extreme stress about having somehow misplaced her gun. She was due for the standard range testing, was responsible for that weapon; she was worried sick, I mean really sick, about not being able to find it. She said she had children visit her home and wanted to be sure the gun was out of their reach,so she had put it in the attic. But when she went to get it, it seemed to have disappeared. She said she tore the attic apart looking for it, and then looked high and low for it all over the house. Frantic, she called and set up an appointment with me to see if hypnosis could help her recall where she had put it, if she hadn’t actually, as she believed, put it in the attic. What hypnosis revealed is that she hated guns, was afraid she’d ever have to use hers and had hidden it from herself as well as her visitors.
Case example number two: One client was unable to find the jewelry she had taken with her to her cabin up north; she recalled putting it high in a kitchen cupboard for safe keeping, and when it was time to go back home she went to retrieve it; she couldn’t find it. The jewelry was bequeathed to her by her mother. She had had many people visit over that summer weekend, some friends and family, but was sure there wasn’t anyone who had spent time there who would have stolen it or even known it was there. She felt great anguish over it as she said it had great sentimental as well as significant monetary value.
Hypnosis revealed the truth. When she had inherited the jewelry, she felt guilty. She hadn’t looked after mother at the end of her life; against her Mothers pleading she had put her in a nursing home, and hadn’t visited as much as she felt she ought to have. In other words she didn’t feel she deserved the jewels.
Case number three: One gentleman’s story was that he had been saving up for many years for his retirement and when he had enough put aside to assure his last years in comfort, he planned to sell the house and move to Florida. He was absolutely sure he had hid the money between the walls in his home in case he was ever broken into and robbed. Though he had ripped out the wall where be was sure he’d hid it, it couldn’t be found. In hypnosis he talked of how hard it would be to leave the home he had built, where he’d brought his bride nearly 50 years before, where he’d raised his boys and wherein he’d nursed his beloved wife until she died. He said, “This house keeps more than my money in its walls, it’s my life in there. As long as I can’t find that money, I can’t leave, can I?” Case solved.
So we hide things from ourselves at times for various reasons. In every case the individuals in these true stories needed some hypnotherapy to address and relieve them of their hidden motivations for not finding what they were looking for. In each case, after proper adjustments made within their minds, they did indeed locate their belongings.
And what if there aren’t deeply rooted motivations for being unable to find what you are looking for? In some cases hypnosis effectively brings to consciousness the location of the object/s, interestingly enough often exactly where they were looked for previously, perhaps many times. Hence the saying “Can’t see for looking! Did that person look carefully enough? What’s the reason he or she didn’t see it there in the first place? The term, “overlooked” often applies.
There are many explanations. You’ll discover some of them as we retrace your steps in this lost and difficult to find phenomenon.
You put something in a draw; you remember putting it in a draw. You go back to get it… you can’t see it, you search in vain; you say to yourself, “I know I put it there. But I can’t see it.” That’s problem number one: When you say you can’t see it, you won’t be able to see it because in essence you have told your subconscious to shut off your functional vision, or it has literally blinded you to the object. Then you get annoyed, and begin to feel stressed and agitated. Problem two: Stress gets in the way of thinking and seeing clearly. Then you probably question yourself, you say something like, “I could have sworn I put it there, but…” but cancels everything that went before it! Now there’s doubt in your attitude; you are questioning the accuracy of your recall. Questioning your accuracy of recall is problem number three: The moment you question yourself in that way you are causing confusion in your mind/brain. First you say you know you put it there, and then you doubt you put it there because no matter how carefully you look for it you can’t see it. You no longer trust your memory. Self doubt hinders just about every faculty in your mind and brain. It’s why learning to deal with doubt is one of the links in my chain of command in my Mind Mastery course. And you say to yourself, and anyone else around, “I can’t find my—” That’s problem number four: When you say you can’t find it, you’ve just given yourself another powerful suggestion and your subconscious will accept it, literally; now you’ve added a sense of the impossibility of finding it to the stress, believing it cannot be found. When you are in a state of stress you are more susceptible to suggestion.
Are you beginning to note how you are not helping yourself find the object?
Problem number five: You start searching in other places, you say to yourself, maybe I put it here… or there… or somewhere else; suggesting to your mind/brain its elsewhere than you originally thought it was. You may imagine, even visualize yourself having put it somewhere else, thinking, ‘maybe its here… or there’ and you search in those places, quite possibly creating false memories.
Problem number six: You don’t leave it alone! You keep thinking about it, going over and over it in your mind, wondering where it is. You tell others you can’t find it, reinforcing the idea that it is indeed lost. You might even say, “I’ve lost my—“. You ask if anyone else has seen it, or if they know where it is; implying that someone else has a better chance of knowing than you do! All the possibilities occur to you and if you are like most people, you think of all too many. This is definitely not helpful.
If you’ve tried retracing your steps and that hasn’t worked, it’s mostly likely because without realizing it you are adding irrelevant details along the way by trying to think about what you were thinking at the time; those thoughts may not be congruent with the actual event. Remembering exactly what we were thinking at any time in the past is highly questionable.
Another factor is that it is quite possible that you may have seriously considered putting the object in the place you’ve been looking, but changed you mind and forgot that you did. If the original intention was more etched in your mind and the last moment change of mind wasn’t as deeply imbedded, well, there you have it. Oops, sorry there you don’t have it!
So now, you may be wondering how you can protect yourself from hiding things from your self, or failing to recall where you put things or why you can’t see them when they are right in front of your eyes?
Now let’s go back to the beginning. If you were not paying proper attention at the time you put the object away… if your mind was someplace else or on something else…if you were distracted in any way, you will only have vague recollections of where you put it: The actions and the thoughts you were having at the time will be mixed up in your memory banks.
In many cases not being able to locate the object in that draw or cupboard is a because of a visual handicap of sorts. When we have an image in our minds of an object, we see it all by itself, not among or surrounded by other things. So we may not be able to clearly define its outline in a draw that’s cluttered with other things, or even if it’s neatly placed among other things. Lines tend to blur, you see— well, in that case, you don’t see clearly, do you?
There’s also the factor of while shuffling through things in that draw at other times, you are inadvertently moving it, actually misplacing it. But that’s where you expect to see it even though it’s no longer exactly where you originally put it. So you can’t see it precisely as you have it in your mind, therefore don’t recognize it.
If you are deliberately hiding something, for whatever reason that’s one explanation for why you can’t find it, no matter how desperately you look for it. Because it is what you say to yourself when you are making a point of hiding the object. Most likely you say to yourself something like, “I’m going to hide it here where no one will find it.” Or, “I’ll make sure no one (or someone) can find this.” So, believe it or not, you hid it from yourself too! Think about it: You are someone. Your intention was to hide it from view.
Keep in mind your subconscious is very literal; it interprets things exactly as you think and/or speak them. That’s’ the reason I teach people in my Mind Mastery Course to watch their language, I also teach the language of the subconscious so that people know just how to communicate effectively with their subconscious, that way there can be no mistaken interpretations and lost meanings.
How to avoid the misplaced, lost and hard to find objects.
First, decide consciously where you plan to put it. Say aloud to yourself as you place it in a draw or cupboard, “I’m putting my—- in here where I will remember where I put it and be able to find it easily.” Be very deliberate and decisive. Take note of where it is in location to other things in there, if it’s next to another object be aware of that; note if it’s high or low, in front or back of the draw or closet. If you need extra help to register it in your memory, write down where you put it and why, and put the note in your diary, your smart phone or on your computer. Be careful when going into that space looking for other things that you don’t absent mindedly move that object to another location; shifting it just inches from where you remember it, or moving it under or behind where it was placed can cause it to seem lost. That’s the reason so many things cannot be found where you originally put them. If you do deliberately relocate the object, make sure you use the same prep work in your mind to keep tabs of its whereabouts so you don’t forget later that you moved it somewhere else.
Also, it’s not advisable to hurriedly put things somewhere, or hurriedly look for them. Haste is said to make waste: It’s a waste of time to rush through any thing you do, it not only provokes mistakes, it impairs your ability to store and recall what you have done.
If all efforts fail, I suggest you do self hypnosis, if you know how, if not I advise you learn, it’s a wonderful tool, and ask your subconscious to tell you where it is. Be careful how you phrase that question, leading questions, such as “Did I put it in the—”, are like an attorney leading the witness. I object! My Mind Mastery students can actually command their subconscious to remember things and their actions.
Hereto hypnosis by a qualified professional, who knows just how to work with your subconscious without leading it, may be necessary to search your memory banks and come up with its location, or discover the reason you have not found it. Of course, the practitioner also needs to know how to resolve the issues too. Hypnosis in some cases enables a person to revivify experiences, that is, re experience putting the object in a certain place. There’s never a guarantee that hypnosis will enable accurate or even any recall. The skill of the operator can insure hypnosis occurs, and know how to use it effectively; keep in mind though that the subject is the other half of the equation. There are many variables to consider in each case. However, it’s worth a giving it a chance.
So, here’s to you finding everything you are looking for.
TTFN and all the best from Elaine
* Addendum. One day recently. la month or so after the above bog was posted, I was looking for a CD that I was sure was placed on top of my filing cabinet in the therapy room. When I couldn’t find it, I emptied the cabinet thinking that it may have fallen either into one of the files or between them. So I went through every file. Not only did I improve the system of organization as I went along, I discarded papers that were taking up space for no good reason, I discovered some extremely useful and valuable documents. Some of these were creations of mine that had been stored and forgotten about; others were powerful memory evoking files that reminded me of the positive impact of my working with family members and friends. I keep those private files separate to those of my clients. Interestingly enough, as soon as I had completed the task I’d set out to do, I found the CD, it was between two pages of the note pad that I use when working with clients. I wondered if my subconscious set this situation up for me. I would not have consciously been sloppy about where I put an object, nor would I have consciously placed it there. When I dialoged with my subconscious ( a method I teach my clients and Mind Mastery Students) to learn the meaning of this venture it admitted that it wanted me to go through the files, carefully, reorganize and rediscover things that otherwise would be lost to my conscious mind. So the message here is that when we feel we have lost something, or cannot find where it is, while searching for it we are likely to find other things that are important to us. Perhaps in the end it is for that very reason we don’t see other things we are looking for that are right under our noses, we are supposed to find other lost or forgotten things.things .