On my early morning runs, sometimes I see a beautiful mother taking her two-year-old for a walk. I can tell he likes me to stop, and she is really pleasant to talk to. His eyes meet mine even before I stop running and stay looking at me, a very steady look. Very calm, comfortable, peaceful. As I talk to his mother, he and I continue to look at each other. He looks straight into my soul, and I into to his. Our eyes start to smile. His name is Dakotah.
I saw him again this morning. There’s now a clear sign of recognition in his eyes. He knows we meet often, I’m a friend. The look in his eyes says he is happy to see me. He never looks away, nor do I. No words pass between us. None are needed.
We’re enjoying the most direct communication there is. Pure harmony and understanding, being to being. Our eyes speak the ageless truth, that our eyes are the windows to our souls. Our windows are open. We like each other, and we haven’t spoken a word.
If you have a Dakotah in your own life, you know what I mean.
All little children are born this way. I’ve delivered programs in 53 countries and have traveled the world. They almost all look at me like that.
Sadly, very few adults do.
What happens between childhood and adulthood that makes adults so uncomfortable and tense about looking into each other’s eyes?
This is a question I ask myself often. In our Causative Communication Live! Workshop, I help the grown ups restore their lost ability to really LOOK at another person. And I always wonder how we let ourselves get so mixed up with so many confusing ideas about it.
By the time we’re grown, we’ve suffered so many injunctions about looking and not looking. We confuse it with staring, get it all mixed up with manners and politeness. We’ve been forced away from using a most NATURAL human ability, fulfilling a deep human desire and fascination, all by believing the most confusing and misguided set of rules ever invented.
My students go through some wild experiences as they restore their natural ability to be there comfortably and just LOOK at another person. They feel like something is going to fall from the sky and crush them if they REALLY look at someone. They are SURE the other person is going to hate it and get irritated. They are CONVINCED they look strange and that it’s not natural. They believe that quickly glancing and looking away is what’s natural, but this is not what human babies or little children do until they’re “trained” by adults who are operating with unquestioned fears and beliefs.
You see these ridiculous fears and beliefs go by the wayside when two people fall in love and they can’t stop looking at each other. And when a new baby is born, both baby and parent alike.
What my students experience and learn is that it is exhilarating and liberating to really LOOK at someone and enjoy the pleasure of really experiencing another human being. They learn to be natural doing it. They learn that when it’s natural, it LOOKS natural, and it looks pleasant and attractive to the other person.
They don’t stare. After years of NOT looking, they simply learn how to look again.
The power and confidence it brings them when they can look someone very comfortably in the eye, unhampered by the confusing rules society has burdened their spirits with, is a source of great satisfaction.
They also discover that when they really look at people with affinity, it transforms the other person. You see this all the time when people talk to children. They are suddenly transformed when they meet a child. They are softer, gentler, kinder, the best of them comes out.
They learn that you can transform the other person just by the way you look at them.
The good news is that this is not a skill you need to learn, it is something you need to remember. You can already do this. It is your natural state. And were it not for the training and conditioning you’ve received, you would do this all of the time.
Learn how to look again. If you want to create extraordinary outcomes, this is the way.
Be the cause!