Empathize
Why you look at people and the environment, how and what you see matters. What if we look with intent; a ‘why’ to see that which lies beyond the obvious – what if we look with why.
Why?
- Discover: observe to discover new information that are latent but critical to forming new ideas.
- Be Aware: know who you are, experience yourself as unique and separate individual.
- Reflect: reflect on the intentions behind what you see and how it challenges the heart and mind.
- Analyse: critically think about things and compare previous knowledge with current data.
- Connect: understand and build interest in people and your surroundings.
How?
- Ask Questions: ask why, how, where, when and what as you observe. Ask why 5 times.
- Be Present: Pay attention to the stimuli from all your senses and ask why such feelings are evoked.
- Think: Identify an idea and think about it deeply about how it applies to your life and activities.
- Define, Compare & interpret: set a measure, compare differences and critically interpret your conclusions.
- Listen: give undivided attention, provide feedback and defer judgement; allow others to express their feelings.
What?
- The Observer: you are the observer, question your intentions and your emotions as you observe.
- Intentions & Biases: know your strengths, weaknesses and biases, and use that to improve.
- Experiences: what you do, how you do it and why you keep acting in that manner.
- Data: current and past information, your thoughts, inclinations and secondary data.
- People: actions and things exist because of people, build capacity to love people and tolerate others.
Reflect
To you, why is observation important? If you you were to travel to a new environment, how will you do it differently? Imagine living in a different space, which different experience will you expect to observe?
Read more about observation here
Act!
Walk to your office, home or destination instead of using transport.
Visit an unknown place in a group and share individual observations when you return
Remember an experience of an event and see what you wised you saw differently.
