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See me as a person. See me for what’s great in me, and have room for what isn’t…
Secretly we all want to be acknowledged for what WE feel is great about us… not what YOU think is. But because we, humans, don’t see who others are… we only see who we are… we never feel seen, we never feel acknowledged for what we feel is good about us.
I remember some 10 years ago I was in a week long training camp in Central Florida with some 40 people.
At some point the leader introduced the idea that you are seen, you are heard. We even got gifted a small framed mirror that had on the frame written ‘I see you!‘
I remember sobbing… because that is not my experience. I hoped that one day I would be seen.
But it is a futile desire: people can’t see YOU. they can see themselves. My mother saw herself and projected it on me. Helen’s father saw himself and projected it on her. BaMan’s mother saw herself and project it on him…
or said in another way: We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
That is why people can’t see that someone is smart. Maybe they can see that they are as smart as they are at their best, but mostly what they see is that the other person is as stupid as they are at their worst.
That is why it is near impossible to find anyone who takes feedback well.
When you have a coach, a mentor, a teacher, ideally they tell you things… things they see for you. For your life, for your business, for your future.
As a coaching client I have ALMOST never had an interaction with a coach about what to do, where I had an experience of being seen, being heard, being considered a person. The coaching, therefore, was always misdirected…
Instead, when I looked, the coach gave me what he would do, what he sees to do… and completely ignored me, who I am, what I am up to.
Even in studying architecture back in Hungary. The system was that you had a ‘tutor’… that wasn’t the name, I can’t remember what officially those architects were called. But you had one, and you met with that person, 2-3 times a week for an hour, and brought in what you’d designed…
Then the ‘tutor’ looked at it, and placed thin tracing paper over it, whipped out their 4B pencil, and drew. Drew their own ideas inspired by mine… but my feeling was that they largely ignored what I drew… who I was.
The finished product at the end of the semester was as much a reflection of them as it was a reflection of me. and when I graduated, and all during the five years, the question was always unanswered: Am I talented? Or was my ‘tutor’ talented?
This whole issue is coming up, really strongly, because of the new course I am going to lead. attempting to change what you see. So that you can do different than you have been.
I have lead, for a few months, a workshop weekly, where people asked questions of their future self. I lead it with the hopes that seeing what the future self accomplished they would be empowered to actually do what it takes to get to that future self.
It was disappointing, to say the least.
Participants saw that the future self possibly made a difference in the world, became a CEO, became a well-known and well-liked clothes creator, etc. Or just had a life they loved and lived powerfully. Lived life with purpose and meaning.
The stumbling block has been their lack of faith and their lack of trust. and that lack of faith, lack or trust remained. their actions in the present didn’t change.
If you look at that statement above, you see only what YOU are. trust is a reflection of how you see yourself, and how you have proven yourself to yourself in the past.
When trust is low, you need someone who believes in you and who holds you up until you can hold yourself up.
One of my defining experiences was when my millionaire friend who quit school when he was 12 and became a dishwasher. He shared with me that what allowed him to climb the social and financial ladder was his mother. His mother saying: ‘you can do it‘. so he proved her right. Just like the little engine whispered to himself ‘I can do it‘ and he did.
My friend imitated his mother’s voice. It has stuck with me over the decades.
I have never had a mother-figure like that. so I say it to myself, with his mother’s voice: ‘you can do it…‘ whenever I am discouraged. and it always works. It gives me the little push. The push I need to actually do it.
Did his mother see him when she said that? Probably not. She probably saw herself, and that is what allowed her to trust him and his abilities.
My most fervent ambition is to be that mother’s voice for my students
My most fervent ambition is to be that voice for my students and not that typical coach who will, like my architecture tutor, use the coaching call for self-aggrandizing.
My ambition is to place myself fully into them… in the student, in their future self, and look and speak from there, until they manage to grow legs to walk on their own, and get the guidance without me standing in to interpret…
It was a very interesting experience, this future self process.
The participant, ideally, gets into an altered state where their mind is taken out of the picture. Also the ego… both mind and ego are an impediment to connecting to the future self.
They connect, and because I am an empath, I connected with them, to THEIR future self.
And the Future Self started communicating, non-verbally. Because I am 100% kinesthetic, I felt the communication. It jerked my body, it made me nod, it made me sway, it made me straighten up, it made me expand, it made me dance, made me laugh. Physically. Move my face, my mouth, my neck… very interesting. But not them.
My expectation was that they would see themselves differently, but instead I saw themselves… they didn’t.
The guidance was always about a new way to be… be trusting, be adventurous, be funny, be a man, be dancing.
You can turn those beingness into doingness… but without the beingness it is unsatisfying, yet another false start.
Future Self always starts where you are, and takes you gently to continue or move sideways… Gently. Gently, like the air conditioning guys say in North Carolina
I am, by nature, not a gently person… I learned to be ‘gently’… so I can let my students know that they matter, that they are seen… But that course didn’t convey that. 🙁
Just like I feel hurt, discarded, invalidated by not mattering to coaches, I know you want to be acknowledged for what you feel is good about you, and you want me to have room for what isn’t so great about you.
That is what it’s like to consider another person a person, not a thing.
But until you consider yourself a person, until you see a person when you look in the mirror, until you treat yourself as a person, everything is going to remain the same.
So in the new workshop this Saturday… oops, tomorrow, I am taking a different tack at altering what you see, who you see…
Because unless you see different, you’ll still act the same way…
Don’t be mistaken, what you think won’t matter… you can’t think different until you SEE different.
Can I guarantee that you’ll be able to see yourself differently? I don’t know… Probably not. But I’ll do my darned best… and I hope you’ll be amenable to change what you see.
Most of us only see what we have already seen. The surface…
And what we see is based on our worldview. The premise… in Socrates’ saying:
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises.
You cannot see your premises. It is below the visible. Once we dig them out and make them visible, you’ll be able to get near to how you really see yourself. Based on what ‘premise’.
Let’s change what you seeSo there you go, again, about the price… for $40 you can’t get more than 10 minutes of my time… and in this class you have a chance for 30 minutes or more… just for your issue.
So if you have been disappointing yourself because you don’t, you can’t, you won’t… this is your chance.
Eventually I’ll get it right… and then this workshop will cost hundreds of dollars…
