This “seeing with fresh eyes” exercise is something I often use when I find myself stuck or I think my client is stuck. When I’m stuck I can make decisions but I’m not confident about them. They might be OK or they might not, either way they don’t resonate. When I’m in this state this exercise really helps me to see things from a different perspective and usually enables me to see a key piece I’ve been missing. Why don’t you try it out?
Find a quiet place take a few calming breaths and close your eyes. Imagine the room you’re in. Because you’re imagining you can make it anything you want. You can change the colour of the carpet, rearrange the furniture, put people in the room and take them out again or turn the lights on or off. You’re now fully in imagining mode. Now let yourself go to sleep ready for a new day. You drift into a deep sleep and wake slowly from it. As you become aware of everything around you again you realise something is different. You went to sleep as the man you know you are but you have woken up as a woman.
Only you know you were a man right up until this point. All of your memories
are living a life of a man but everyone else seems to be living in some sort of parallel universe because to them you are a wife, a mother, a businesswoman!
Now it’s over to you to do the work of imagining what happens next. Here are some questions to get you started, but I want you to really put yourself in this situation and use your imagination to follow through with all the details.
Think about how you would handle the situation if:
- You sensed the board wasn’t taking your brilliantly prepared presentation seriously just because you were a woman?
- One man kept looking at your cleavage the whole way through the presentation?
- The men couldn’t look you in the eye and the women ignored you?
- Whenever you made your best points, the men spoke over you or, to make matters worse, represented your ideas as their own?
- You were a woman for a whole day/week/month/year?
- As a woman at home you are now a mother instead of a father. How does your relationship with your children change? How do your responsibilities change?
- How do you think you’d relate to your partner in this role reversal?
Now I want to take your thinking to another level. Instead of negative thoughts and feelings, I want you to think about the opportunities this presents. Suddenly you have the ability to see the world through a completely fresh set of eyes. Everything is the same and everything is different. You have the opportunity to experience how perception really works.
You have the ability to noticethings you never noticed before. You have the ability to notice things about your company that you never noticed before.
Think about relationships:
- Who has the real power?
- What really matters to these people?
- What really matters to the company? (is it more than just profit?)
- Although your gender has changed, do you think the core of you has changed?
- Think about the things that really matter to you. Have any of those changed?
By allowing my imagination to really get into experiencing all of what the contrast has to offer, and by allowing myself to step out of my own body and look at life with fresh eyes, this exercise has allowed me to see what really matters to me, sometimes with a clarity that I’ve never before thought possible!
Other results I’ve discovered is a different type of energy and the ability to act swiftly and decisively.
I hope you give this ‘seeing with fresh eyes’ exercise a go. Your world may become a place of clarity, full of possibilities and opportunities.
If you would like to share your scenarios and experiences I’d love to read them – just click the ‘comments’ link above.