We All Want to Be Seen

We All Want to Be Seen
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We all want to be seen more than a label of age or gender or race or whatever box the eyes see us.

But first we have to see ourselves. Not as how we come across to the world but how we feel and who we are. That is the journey we are on.

Judgement is a human condition. We are conditioned to be seen in a certain way and behave in certain manners. The path from childhood to our teenage years is one of conformity and learning societal norms of what is acceptable and what is not. We learn in school what gets attention and we are beaten into submission into the culture of sameness by how we show up, which group we hang out with and who accepts or rejects us, that is all predetermined for us, including being graded by a bell curve of how we compare to others.

There are lessons beyond math and history that show us a snapshot of how to be in the world. And yet what we don't realize at that tender age is that there is a huge universe of people out there that we resonate with who may not go to our school. There is an abundance in the world of other groups and people just like us who don't like labels and don't want to fit in. They are rebels like us who want more out of life than to follow the norm.

Always A Rebel

What happens when we follow our heart and want to show up in the world as who we are? That's not a question we get asked often and yet it should be a required class in school. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we stopped and asked kids what they want to be from an early age and started talking to them about who they are in the world and what sparks their imagination. And yet, our conditioning forces us to continuously fragment and separate people into boxes and labels.

It goes beyond kids to our world today, where our conversations usually focus around what we do for a living; not how we live. I wonder what percentage of our time we talk about living and what percentage we are actually living in the present moment.

I recently gave a keynote in Mexico about 21st century leadership and stayed at the hotel a few extra days to work on my book. When I arrived they put a bracelet on my wrist and told me to wear it. They then took me to my room, which was at a certain part of the hotel. I roamed around taking breaks to go to the beach between writing. Someone who was at my talk recommended the best and quietest places for me to write outdoors and he was a senior executive with the hotel chain so I trusted his recommendations.

The next day I took his advice and ventured out to this quieter pool on the fourth day. I had all my papers with me and was going to write by the pool. I picked up my towel and found a spot only to have the person working the pool approach me and publicly reprimand me for not wearing the right bracelet. I was confused as I had been in that area of the hotel before and now I was being told I was not welcomed and not allowed to be here because my bracelet was purple and this is for the people who had a while bracelet. Wouldn't it had been nice if someone shared the hotel rules when I checked in and not in front of all these people who were now watching this event? If I knew this was for the white bracelet people, I never would have tried to crash their party.

Some days, reality hits us right between the eyes. We leave our hotel room with the image of how our day will unfold, all excited about the script we wrote in our heads. We had this grand vision of enjoying the outdoors and butting into other people's stories while we focus on the work we promised ourselves we'd get done that day. We had a plan of how it would all play out. And all of a sudden new rules make an appearance.

This incident came into my path for a reason. It was what I was writing about in my book about how we have lost common sense in business. When I saw the General Manager (GM) later, it sounded like I ended up causing them a major headache since I spoke out and didn't take this incident lightly. I also took my bracelet off and didn't want to be put in a box. The guard at the white bracelet beach took down my name when I showed up without it.

I understood the GMs perspective, they trained their staff to keep an eye of on what color bracelet guests wore to make sure they go to the areas they paid for. It's kind of like making sure you are sitting in business or economy class and in my case, no one told me there were different tickets or classes of service. I simply was unaware of the class system on the property since my room was in the business class section of the hotel but I never got the bracelet or the information.

And quite frankly, I don't want to be seen as a guest with a color coded bracelet. I want to be seen and treated to like a fellow human being. The guy at the pool was simply doing his job. That is how he was trained. The general manager, who was at part of my talk, came up to me and asked me to please put my bracelet back on because it is confusing the staff and of course, someone showed up later and gave me a white bracelet for the rest of my stay. But that wan't the point. I ended up understanding the confusion I created so I ended up wearing both until I left.

We All Want to be Seen

Can you imagine our world if we were simply allowed to show up as who we are? Where someone working for a company connected with their customers on a human level instead of doing their job? When will we start training people beyond the rules? Can we blame someone for simply doing their job? What if we made the person's job at a hotel to delight the customer and see each customer as an opportunity to create a great experience?

And yes, I know the hotel or the airline segregates us based on how much we pay and treats us accordingly. And then trains their people to follow the rules. Their profitability is at stake.

But isn't it time to see us as people. What is a customer at the end of the day? Isn't it time for a new conversation in the 21st century?

For me, it starts by speaking up on behalf of other people who have lost their voice or have been conditioned to follow the rules. It is the era to un-condition and start having more conversations about who we are and what kind of world we want to live in. My world is one where we see each other and we get to be who we are. It's time for us to bring our humanity to business and shape our world together, where humanity is at the center for all of us. My career has given me the privilege to work around the world and I have witnessed much so far in my life. I have worked with young people who want a different world of opportunity and possibility. These are exciting times.

And it is the time to be seen by ourselves and others for who we are. Are you allowing yourself to be seen?

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