The Sender: A Story About When Right Words Make All The Difference

by Kevin Elko

Hi, Charlie. I’m out here on the soccer field watching my boy and I thought of something. I’m going to let all the doctors and the nurses and all the professionals take care of your body and your cancer, but I want to talk to you about your eyes. Think about the car you drive right now. The day after you bought that car, did you not see that car everywhere? I bought a BMW. I didn’t know there were seven hundred BMWs on my block. I put a CB radio in mine though to make me different. What did they do, ship those cars in? What happened is, at the back of your brain, the back of your head, there’s something called the reticular activation system. You will see twenty-five thousand things today. Maybe not so many, since you are sitting in a hospital, but you will see a lot. You won’t remember seeing most of them. After you bought that car your reticular activation system changed. Now you start seeing your car everywhere. It’s the eyes. I want to talk to you about conditioning your eyes. When I spoke to the Packers the first time, I almost got beat up. I mentioned teeny-tiny Appalachian State beating the mighty Michigan in football. The Packers had a Heisman Trophy winner from Michigan. He jumped up and said, “I don’t like that story, boy.” I can only bench press a hoagie so that was an issue. The quarterback of Appalachian State was interviewed after the game. He said that they beat the favored Wolverines by watching them on film over and over and over until they saw opportunity...