If you notice this notice (again)

(I’m stepping away from the screen for a couple of weeks to concentrate on another project. Rather than leave you in limbo, here’s a post from 2010: the question’s still very relevant.)

… you will notice that it’s not worth noticing. Remember that daft saying?

Noticing is a funny thing though. When I first started training as a coach, my own coach (the rather fab Liza Hughes of Why Not?) spent a lot of time asking me what I was ‘noticing’. How I squirmed with all that ‘noticing’! I’d think ‘I don’t want to notice – that takes time, I’m too busy to notice.’ ‘What if I notice something I don’t like?’ ‘What if I don’t notice anything?’

How many of us have switched on the CD player in the car only to be surprised when the radio blares out alerting us to the fact the CD’s finished and realised that we never even heard a single track? How many times have I rushed past a Big Issue seller and muttered ‘no thanks’ without even looking in his or her eyes? How many times have you seen the children start going back to school in September and thought ‘where did the Summer go?’

Three years into my coaching journey, I would say that I’m pretty practised at ‘professional noticing’ – picking up on what’s happening in a session, what a client is saying or not saying, how he might be feeling, what her body language might suggest.

So I’m thinking that now I want to apply that in my own life. I don’t want to miss out because I was too busy to notice.

So this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to bury my head deeply in the fragrance of the flowers in my garden; I’m going to savour my lunch instead of wolfing it down at my desk as I work through a spreadsheet; I’m going to walk barefoot on the lawn; I’m going to listen to a play on the radio and let my mind conjure up the images for me; I’m going to really look into the faces of the people I meet as I go about my day.

Today’s pebble: what will you notice this week?

Over to you …

Michelle

Turning over pebbles is the blog of Thinking Space Coaching.

If you’d like to make progress in your work and life, why not email me to see how we could work together?