Noticing

Sometimes it seems that no matter what we do or how we try, we can’t change things. Some of us don’t even know what’s wrong. And others could write an eloquent, deeply self-knowledgeable description of all we face, knowing the essay could likely be reprinted the following year exactly as written. Either way, the things that keep us unchanged are not moved by our thoughts.

I remember years back, when we both had young children, my cousin sent me a little article entitled, “The Lowly Stick Makes it into The Toy Hall of Fame”. It made me laugh. It’s true. If you watch kids playing you see that they most often abandon the elaborate toys made for a specific purpose in favor of a simple object that can have myriad uses. The stick ain’t glamorous. You wouldn’t present it in festive birthday wrap. But it is always there to offer rich and joyful play to any kid who picks it up.

Noticing is like that. It is exquisitely simple and always at hand. And it guides you directly to the buried treasure within that allows true change and healing.

To notice, you stop everything for a micro second. Stop everything you’re doing. Stop everything you’re thinking. And then take that micro second to notice the state you’re in. It could be, “I notice I’m amped and nervous.” Or, “I notice back pain I’ve been ignoring.” Or, “I notice that this noticing feels stupid and unhelpful.” Whatever it is, the act of stopping and noticing, and continuing to stop and notice, cascades down into your being in a healing chain reaction. You might be still living mostly from your usual MO but in the micro seconds that you are not, you are moving heaven and earth inside you.

There are two big keys to noticing. One is to not stray from noticing. The moment you stop noticing and start analyzing, you are in thinking mode. And your thought patterns have been honed and perfected your whole life. The part of you that goes into thinking mode is a specialist, an expert in it’s field. But it is not the field you need right now to get you where you want to go.

The second, and most important key to noticing is self-compassion. It is an intention to judge absolutely nothing about what you notice, to unconditionally accept whatever comes up. So noticing without self-compassion, and with some analyzing, may go like this, “I notice I am angry at my friend. I think I’m actually jealous of my friend. How horrible of me.” And simply noticing with self-compassion would go like this, “I notice I am angry at my friend. I notice jealousy. Oh boy, I notice it is difficult to feel jealousy. I feel yucky about myself being jealous of a friend. Okay.“ The “okay” in self-compassionate noticing is huge. It is unconditional acceptance. “Okay, this is just how it is.” Not forever, but in this moment. All your dislike of it, and your discomfort around it, will not change it. But just noticing it and accepting it will.

Noticing is an experiential phenomenon. You just gotta try it a handful of times and see where it takes you. You may be skeptical. You may say, “It is completely unclear how this works.” Okay. Like the lowly stick, it’s always there for you to pick up and play with when you feel like it.