Eyes

I stood in that unfamiliar room with my legs feeling shaky and my mind feeling fuzzy.

I was getting slightly lightheaded and instantly recognized what this was.

My good old friend, pre-teaching anxiety.

It had been a while, a really long while, since we hung out.
And I wasn't so happy about the reunion

I hate the feeling of those nervous jitters, where it feels like a lot is at stake.

I was trusted with something extremely important to me.
The room was full of people I had never met.
Turns out, way more people were showing up than I expected.

And I certainly didn't want to let anybody down.

I took a few deep breaths and told myself things would be okay.
That I could do this.
That years ago when I first started teaching I overcame even bigger nerves.

It helped but didn't take the jitters away completely.

Every cell in my body wanted to avoid this uncomfortable nervous feeling.

But I was there and there seemed to be no way out, and in my desperation to find some relief I had an epiphany:

Look deeply into these people's eyes.

Every single one in the room.

And so scan the room I did.

Peering carefully into one pair of eyes after the other.
(Not in a creepy way, just gentle, attentive eye contact, with a warm smile if they happened to be looking my way too).

And then something seemingly miraculous happened.

That veil of nerves lifted.

I felt like myself again.
Focused, motivated, excited, and ready to connect from a personal place.

Here's the crazy thing that happens sometimes,
and now that I'm aware of it, I notice people (myself included) doing it so often, we rarely look at others attentively.

Our gaze usually looks at their face on a surface level.
That gives us a few facial expressions and labels to start off with.

But it never takes us beyond the surface.

If we truly want to see people, the essence of who they are under the surface of an external appearance and social identity, the quickest way to do so is to look deeply into their eyes.

Not trying to take you to hippie-town here, but this stuff actually works.
Humor me and try it.
And let me know what you find.

The reason my nerves evaporated into thin air when I looked into the eyes of the people I was afraid of disappointing is that by looking past the external facade and straight into their eyes
I humanized them.

Suddenly the story in my head seemed less overwhelming.
And the situation less intimidating.

I'm sharing the nerves example because this is where I had this realization,
but ever since, I've been finding this applicable in many different life experiences.

When I'm annoyed at someone,
or tempted to argue,
or feeling impatient.
When I'm feeling disconnected from them.
When I feel like I could love them a bit more.

Humanizing them by looking past the mask into *cheese alert* a deeper place of who they truly are is a complete game-changer.

Now, this might seem like the most obvious thing in the world to you.

Or you might think I'm completely crazy.

Either way, I invite you to join me on an experiment for the next few days and test this out:

What changes when you look more carefully into people's eyes?

When you're feeling resistance or anger or sadness or fear around someone, check-in: are you focused on their exterior mask or are you looking at them more deeply?

When you feel and express love (this works not just with people but with animals too, I tested it hahaha), is your capacity to love amplified when you make intentional eye contact?