Internal Observer, External Observer
The importance of both in our lives
Aloha, welina, welcome to this weekʻs essay. We have passed the Solstice, the longest day of the hot season in the Northern Hemisphere (shout out if you are reading from the short days of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.) I have emerged from my annual June mini writing retreat, flipping the commonplace that it is in the dark days of winter that we yearn to climb into the cave of quiet contemplation. Asked in a 2-hour virtual meeting this week to place my “dot” on an interactive matrix with one axis being energy level and the other mood, I found myself smack on the boundary between low and high energy, but firmly in the quadrant of optimism. Please pause and check your own place on the matrix right now - and maybe again after reading and reflecting on this bit of writing. Drop a comment in the comments?
And to my many readers who are in the real estate profession, there are some paragraphs just for you this week.
Unlike some writers who struggle to find a topic, my initial task most weeks is to sift through the multiple ideas in my brain vying for their day on the page. I usually also re-read my recent posts1, for the sake of providing some continuity but also because I often discover what was missing. Sometimes I find a prompt in another article or a random conversation at a party or on a real estate client call.
This week I was settled on beginning with my third-grade teacher, Mrs Thompson. Until this morning, when I read the weekly email from one of my yoga teacherʻs teachers, Janet MacLeod. It felt right to begin with her sharing of a quotation from the founder of the yoga lineage, BKS Iyengar:
Do not overstretch or understretch. Overstretch comes from exhibitionism from a swollen ego. Overstretch comes when one loses contact with one’s center - the divine core. Understretch comes from escapism, lack of confidence. Both are wrong.
As it turns out, Janetʻs message was not really about overstretch and understretch, nor about being physically or temperamentally inclined to overreach or play it safe. It was really about the need to have both a skilled teacher and a well-developed, non-judgmental inner observer. It was really about one of the frequent themes I find myself writing about in They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir: that whatʻs happening in our “real life” shows up in our other practices (horsemanship, yoga), and that other somatic practices can teach us about center, flexibility, and leadership in ways that profoundly influence our capacity and skill at work and in our close relationships.
Janet ended her essay on the practice of yoga with these sentences:
Yoga is a wonderful subject for obtaining physical/mental balance. In understanding the nature of the mind more distinctly, there comes the realization that it can give false messages. Over time more clarity is gained on how to approach practice and as a result embrace it in daily life.
I want to emphasize that she initially calls yoga a subject rather than a practice. The practice she is talking about bringing to yoga as a subject - call it open listening/neutral observation, kilo, meditation off the cushion - is observation that is at once coming from mind, body and spirit, observation that has a quality of equanimity, observation that is fluid rather than fixed, observation that is present rather than conclusive. The subject can be yoga or interactions between horses or the business meeting in progress. The subject can be the morning news on the car radio or my feeds, full of pain and suffering and parades with cheering for championships or Pride. The subject can be our daily walk or our childrenʻs chatter. The subject can be the workings of my overactive mind.
Janetʻs sentences acknowledge that our physical, embodied practices have somatic benefits, mind-body-spirit benefits, not just bodily ones. That in yogaʻs teachings, asana or postures are only one limb of the eight limbs of yoga, which has as its aim the development of the somatic whole. The foundational limbs of yoga require us to extend ourselves in a responsible way in the world, both the ways in which we exercise restraint, and the ways we proactively engage in relationship2. The higher limbs of yoga require us to observe the workings of our own mind. In the middle between stretching outward and stretching inward, we center and ground in the body.
Where does the inner observing mind come in? Where does an external observer, a teacher come in?
My physical body doing yoga, the horse in the EGE exercise, might tell me when I am unbalanced, off-center physically or emotionally (the two are often related). Initially an outer teacher can help pinpoint the source of the imbalance, a tightness or an overreaching. Eventually, our inner observer becomes the “teacher within.” Noticing what it notices, letting go of the judgment or interpretation, noticing what it notices again, skilled at observing what is “off” or limiting and knowing how we might arrive at a place of greater balance, center, curiosity, possibility.
This flexibility of mind has practical implications - for poets and for business leaders; for therapists and for contractors; and yes, even for salespeople.
You came here as a reader with an open mind; I think there is a good chance you do this without even knowing it.
On Friday afternoon this week, brokers were holding Open Houses at a handful of properties along our usually sunny, sunset and Maui view, Kohala Coast. I arrived at the first home, in a gated oceanfront community of homes on 10-acre parcels a few miles from my own home. I knew the long-time, two owners ago owners, in fact, knew them because decades ago we “sat” together on Sunday afternoons out on the land of windward Kohala owned by the teachers of Vipassana Hawaiʻi. Perhaps that somatic mind-body-spirit connection to people and memories invited me to be a different observer than the one I might be if I was touring prospective buyers through three or four listings on a tight schedule.
Let me narrate my open listening/neutral observation, as I approached the home with curiosity about how it had been renovated by the current owners who are now offering it for sale.
As I got out of my car alongside the circular driveway, I saw another agent walking towards me, having completed his visit. We hugged.3 I asked what he thought, knowing he also would have seen the property when it was for sale a few years ago. He responded with a long story about the prospective buyer he had then, the list they made of necessary improvements, and the fact that these owners had done all of it except they did not change out the original tile that runs from the porte cochere through the courtyard entry to the central gathering areas of the home. He thought that was a shame. That that single factor would be responsible for them not getting asking price.
As I approached the home, all I could see was the older tile. All I could see was the older tile colored by his assessment. Luckily, with a chuckle, I noticed my thought and let it go. I backed up, mentally and a few steps physically, and took in the grandeur of the entrance, this time noticing the continuity of the tile as it welcome me through the door, noticing the way in which it blurred the distinction between inside and outside. Noticing it as a nod to the vintage of the home and to practicality, even as I took in the beautifully executed brand new kitchen, the gleaming wood flooring in the kitchen-dining-seating areas.
After I greeted the hosting agents, I let go of those thoughts, softened my gaze, and just breathed in the setting. Let my senses take in the grass and the breeze and the ocean, the pool with a trickling waterfall. I sighed with a feeling of serenity.
Another broker arrived. His long ago memories were of keeping horses on an adjacent vacant lot, and how some days he would arrive to find them at the fenceline, listening with fascination to the sound of classical music being played on a grand piano. My noticing shifted again, imagining music in the space. Glancing to the back five acres to note that indeed, there was still a ranch gate beyond the photovoltaic panels and so the possibility of keeping a couple of horses.
Each of these other external observers added to my perception. They were the prompt to observe, notice my observation, and let it go again to be changed or expanded.
Isnʻt this what we do as good sales people, as coaches, as meeting facilitators, as parents? Allow our own perceptions to filter through as we listen attentively, even feeling or seeing in our own bodies what our client or customer or team or family member is feeling or seeing? Skillfully noting what is our impression and assessment and what is an alternative noticing or opinion held by others, being curious and open, while also being centered in our own grounding and expertise.
Anything and everything in life can be both the subject of our practice and the practice itself. Even our solitary pursuits are enhanced by embracing what we can learn from teachers and community.
Next week - my third grade teacher Mrs Thompson.
If you click here, you see the most recent at the top. I re-read starting with the one about becoming a fresh observer. More on that today.
One might see these guidelines and practices as similar to the practice of kapu aloha.
I donʻt know how real estate professionals behave in other markets but in Hawaiʻi we are in a relationship business in a relationship culture so we hug.