How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

People have trouble picturing and getting excited about the unfamiliar, but they love to talk about what they know. To get a conversation rolling, find the thing the other person is most attached to. If they’re wearing a T-shirt from their kid’s sports team, ask about that. If they’ve got a nice motorcycle, lead with a question about it.

When you’re practicing Illuminationism, you’re offering a gaze that says, “I want to get to know you and be known by you.” It’s a gaze that positively answers the question everybody is unconsciously asking themselves when they meet you: “Am I a person to you? Do you care about me? Am I a priority for you?” The answers to those questions are conveye

Psychologists recommend that you ask your friend to fill in the blanks to these two statements: “In our family, the one thing you must never do is _____” and “In our family, the one thing you must do above all else is ________.” That’s a way to help a person see more clearly the deep values that were embedded in the way they were raised.

She intuited that there was some internal struggle inside John, that there were feelings he was hiding from, which he had built moats and fortresses to keep away.

A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. Somebody floats a half-formed idea. Somebody else seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her own memories, and floats it back so the other person can respond. A good conversation sparks you to have thoughts you never had before. A good conversation starts

Wisdom is the ability to see deeply into who people are and how they should move in the complex situations of life. That’s the great gift Illuminators share with those around them.

There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others a

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

A person who is good at mirroring is quick to experience the emotions of the person in front of them, is quick to reenact in his own body the emotions the other person is holding in hers. A person who is good at mirroring smiles at smiles, yawns at yawns, and frowns at frowns. He unconsciously attunes his breathing patterns, heart rate, speaking sp