Hello ,
This is a true story about how I discovered that you look- or- you can LOOK.
And that changed everything.
One hot fateful Oklahoma summer day (and they can be over 100 degrees easily), my all-too- eager-to-get-into-the-water 13-year-old self made the mistake of diving into a large outdoor pool without first removing my contact lenses.
Unaware of the problem, I roamed all over the pool, spending an inordinate amount of time underwater as I loved to do.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I forgot to take out my lenses.
YIkes!
Checking, one of them was indeed missing.
OMG.
(pause before near panic)
For a little context, contact lenses weren’t as advanced back then as they are today.
They were hard, small, non-disposable, and expensive.
And losing one was very likely to have painful consequences if you know what I mean.
As I looked at the dancing of light across the vast expanse of undifferentiated whiteness on bottom of this nearly Olympic sized pool – it was daunting.
I faced the seemingly impossible task of finding a tiny piece of curved, transparent hard plastic at the bottom of the pool in bright sunlight.
Oddly, I remember the sequence of thoughts I had.
The part of me scoping the task said: “This is impossible!”
But this other part of me thought: “Well, maybe it’s not.”
To which my first part retorted: “Are you kidding? Look at the size of this pool!”
And, continuing the argument with myself – “Yeah, but no one’s here. And the water is kind of still; perhaps there will be an unusual reflection where it landed?”
The first part of me got interested in the science experiment. “Hmm. Well, OK, because you’re going to be in big trouble otherwise.”
So, I took a big breath and went underwater, one of my favorite places in the world to be.
It was daunting, to be sure. But I began.
I started examining the floor of the pool and quickly scanned sections of its uniformly white and unremarkable bottom.
Nothing.
Coming up for air. a sense of despair started to come over me.
Then something somewhat unexpected happened.
I had a thought: “Look, REALLY look. USE YOUR EYES.”
Hmmmmm.
So I resumed canvassing, but this time I made an effort of will to really see and study what I was looking at.
I began examining smaller segments in a structured way, scanning one small section at a time.
With this additional concentration, I was seeing a LOT more than before.
Small imperfections in the surface.
Little bits of sediment or rock on the bottom.
Then another thought: “Look for differences in the light.
Whoa.
Yes, of course. It is a “lens,” after all. So any deviation in the quality of the light might stand out from the uniformity of even lighting on a solid white background.
It’s designed to shape light.
So using the same quality of focus, I relaxed a little bit and let my eyes naturally notice, “What looked different?”
No more than 20 seconds later, my eyes were drawn to a slight variation in the light at a spot on the bottom of the pool not more than 10 feet from me.
And that was it.
All I could think was………”wow.”
I had dodged a lousy outcome for me and learned a lesson that would alter my life.
(To this day, I’m the “finder” in my household. If something is lost, the call goes out for me to go to work. And I invoke the same mantra “use your eyes.”)
What experienced is that one can summon energy at will to really see in a way that uncommon in day-to-day life.
And if you can do that with seeing, then why not listening, touching and all the senses?
This was a new world of possibility.
From Seeing to Listening to Empathy
Fascinated with this discovery, I began applying this heightened level of attention to many things, especially listening.
I became fascinated with exploring in a serious way, “What can I know about a person just by really looking and listening?”
Often, it was an objective experience. Sometimes I say to coaches in training, “be like Sherlock Holmes. What do you see? What do you notice? USE your eyes!”
You can see that a person is a certain age, wears Reeboks, is a certain height, body type, and other physical, easily observable facts that can tell important details about a person.
For example, if your client is extremely tall, you know without “making up a story” that your client is walking through a world that is not made for them. They don’t fit in the rooms that fit other people. They hit their heads on door frames. They aren’t comfortable in most chairs. In crowd, they have a great view and arent they used to having their view blocked by the backs of others peoples heads in a theatre or ion a crowd.
It’s hard for them find beds and clothes that fit.
What’s it like to walk through the world this way?
I get curious about their experience of these things and the impact of it on them.
And while this objective sensing opens up vast areas of awareness, even more profound was bringing this capacithy to bear with “open arewarness.” Noticing how what arises in me in general, as a result of this overall experience.
While seeing objective details was deeply interesting, the open awareness was deeply connecting.
Now, instead of just seeing characteristics about someone, I was close to something like empathy. Feeling what it might be like to have an experience like them.
This led me to deeply explore the art of somatic listening and eventually study mindfulness-based somatic psychology, where I was fortunate enough to learn from some incredible teachers. I managed, through luck (to find such great trainers) and perseverance (they weren’t all great), a way to combine my passion for paying attention in the moment with a set of powerful somatic skills to use in real-time with clients and others.
Now I had a way to explore what was going on behind the scenes, what was unspoken, with people that was powerful and elegant – and still in evidence objectively.
This pracitce changed a great deal for both my life and my clients, because they are exceptionally valuable in session, and I teach them to others so they can have better conversations and connections in work and life as well.
In the next letter, I’ll share how I learned and an incredble lesson that can help us all be more reslient in the moment.
Stay Present,
Brett