The one thing...

After 3 years of practicing movement, I’ve noticed multiple paradigm shifts. I don’t want to give all the juices away in one go, but I would like to share with you one in particular: Observing.

Observing is such a critical component of our being. We observe so much but aren’t really aware of its impact on our daily lives and how we approach things. Let me tell you that when you tap into its potential you’ll start to see differently.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Let’s start with one of the most creative and curious human beings in human history: Leonardo da Vinci. 

In the book ‘Mastery’ by Robert Greene1, there is a passage about Leonardo as a young kid. Here snuck into his father’s office to grab a couple of sheets of paper and tools to sketch and ran off into nature. Sitting on a rock by a waterfall he began to sketch everything that happened in nature. He returned and did the same thing every day, even when the weather was horrible. With nobody to tell or teach him anything about what he was ‘supposed’ to do when drawing, he turned to his eyes and observed.

By practicing repeatedly, his observations became clearer and he spotted newer details that he translated on paper. At one point he drew a white iris and because his observations were so profound, he noticed the peculiar shape of the flower. He had drawn the various stages of the flower throughout the years and began to wonder why this plant grew in such an astonishing flower, also because it was very different compared to the transformation of other flowers. This questioning about the transformation of the white iris was evoked after years of observing, which would be a symbol of how Leonardo approached many things in life.

We all know some, many, or all of the beautiful and extremely detailed paintings Leonardo Da Vinci made in his lifetime. That level of detail, which encapsulated emotions and movements so accurately, came from focusing deeply and with a lot of attention on the object he was trying to capture.

He listened with his eyes, he observed.

The biggest benefit of observing

In our day and age, we believe that money is our biggest currency. That is what we think, but it is not. The biggest currency is attention.

Everyone, every company, and every institution is fighting to get your attention. If we look at how long our attention span currently is, it is quite shocking. In 2000 we clocked in at 12 seconds were in 2015 it decreased to 8 seconds. A goldfish clocks in at 9 seconds.

You can guess where I’m getting at so it is no surprise that by enhancing your observing capabilities your attention span will likely increase. And when you increase your attention span, you’ll increase the endurance of your focus and the level of detail in the information that you’re gathering.

As a result, the way you learn and want to learn will never be the same again.

Learning, not stealing

I really like Michael Buble’s story about being a good mimic. In an interview with Dan Rather, he was asked, “You have the reputation of being a very good mimic, can you do a few?” He retells a story about the advice he got one day. “You know it’s funny, I talked to Tony(Tony Bennett) about this last night.” Then Tony said, “Michael you steal from everybody and it’s research, you steal from one you’re just a thief.”

Michael goes on by saying that he learned from the people he admired and loved like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. "I started to be able to take things and aspects of them that I loved. And there were certain things that I found, characteristics of their vocal ability or even their technique, that I found sort of fascinating. Not that I can mimic it as well, but at least I understand what it is that I like."

So by looking and listening to his peers over and over again, Michael started to see aspects that appealed to him, which he tried to make his own.

Slowly but steadily he was crafting his own voice.

Own experience

Within the movement practice, there are a lot of moments where the focus is heavily reliant on observing. Because we are exposed to so many new materials we often get confused and frustrated.

As explained in my previous post frustration is exactly the point where you want to be if you want to learn. So in the practice, whether you want to learn a basic locomotive pattern, figure out a movement riddle or see how somebody does a handstand, you are pulled into the pool of observing.

Your desire to get the thing you see somebody is doing gets amplified, which initiates the visual system to be very alert and to watch every tiny detail as vividly as possible.

How to start with more observing

During the day you are looking all the time; at where to walk, how to hold your coffee, how to approach someone, how to react in a situation, and so on, but these are unconscious processes. So it is about being more aware of when you look and what you look at.

Being aware while looking requires attention to your intention, which facilitates new ways to learn. What you want to learn is up to you, but here are some examples where intentionally observing can help you:

1. Improve your body language skills → observe a very extroverted charismatic person in your personal or work life.

2. How to write a personalized newsletter → find someone whose writing style you like and observe what it is that makes it interesting for you.

3. Become more mindful → take one minute somewhere on a day where you just try to observe your thoughts.

The question is ‘What do you want to learn?’

Last but not least

What helps the process when you have a topic you want to be better at is having a notebook. When you’re intentionally observing there is a lot to unpack. By having a notebook where you can note your most interesting findings, observation is more likely to become a structural part of your life. In return, you are creating your own language. And that’s a superpower.

What will you do with better observational skills?

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