What We Practise Seeing

Several years ago, I was facilitating a group through an exercise in which we walked slowly around an outdoor space in silence. The invitation was simple and general: be aware, notice and pay attention. When we came back together, I asked the group, “What did you notice?”

We had all walked through exactly the same space, yet the answers were remarkably different. We had inhabited completely different worlds. One person described the birds, another focused on the cracks in the pavement, someone else expressed discomfort at being watched while walking, and one participant barely noticed the surroundings at all, having spent the entire exercise thinking about work.

Situations like this always challenge my assumptions about seeing the world as it is, because I often notice what I have practised noticing. It makes me wonder how much of our experience is shaped by where our attention naturally settles.

• If I spend every day looking for what is broken, I become exceptionally good at spotting it.

• If I constantly scan for threats, I become increasingly convinced the world is dangerous.

• If I notice only what confirms my existing beliefs, they begin to feel like objective reality.

This is not due to dishonesty; it happens because our attention is never neutral. What we pay attention to teaches us what is important. The challenge is that attention also becomes a habit, and we stop choosing where to focus. It starts choosing for us. This might be one reason why changing each other’s minds, or our own, can be difficult.

Each of us has practised seeing the world differently, which goes beyond merely holding different opinions. Over time, our attention carves familiar pathways. Certain stories become easier to recognise than others. Certain people become easier to understand. Certain possibilities disappear from view altogether.

This is why I have become increasingly interested in practices rather than simply ideas, because practices interrupt habit and invite us to notice something we may have walked past a hundred times. Although we may feel it suddenly appeared, it was our attention that finally arrived.

Looking back over this series, many of the questions that have surfaced have really been about attention.

What do we notice?
What do we avoid?
What do we grow numb to?
What remains worthy of our gratitude?
Where do we situate ourselves in the story?

Perhaps changing the world sometimes begins with practising to see differently and allowing it to change us.

Not because the world has changed, but because we have.

This is the tenth article of a broader exploration into what happens after awareness—how we stay open to complexity, deepen connection, and move toward meaningful collective action.