Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We are on episode 1, 2, 5 today. Thanks for joining us. Hey there, Brian. Hey, Ani. How are you?

Brian
I’m doing well. I am invisible.

Ani
Well, you are invisible unless people are watching you on YouTube.

Brian
Okay, it’s It’s true.

Ani
Many of our listeners actually listen on Spotify and Apple podcast and things like that. So it is a podcast.

Brian
Just imagine that I went invisible.

Ani
Is that why you’re wearing your hood? I’m wearing my hood. Yes, I could be invisible today. That was creative. I was wondering why you showed up in a hoodie, and now I know. Thank you for pointing that out.

Brian
Planning. I’m planning behind everything.

Ani
Today, we’re talking about visibility, if you didn’t guess.

Brian
Let’s talk about your visibility problem, people.

Ani
This is something that we talk about in every day, all the time. Our associate coaches are talking about it with their clients. We’re talking about it with our clients, group programs, certification programs, you name it. It’s all about visibility.

Brian
Lots of visibility stuff, and especially for- Especially for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs and small business owners that want to grow their business, that want to grow their revenue and have have struggled with that.

Ani
And their impact.

Brian
And their impact, yeah.

Ani
We’re probably going to slant the conversation towards small business owners and entrepreneurs for the remainder of the conversation. But let’s just say that it’s probably a visibility problem if you’re having trouble having conversation with your partner, your mother, your sister, your brother. Anything that has to do with personal stuff oftentimes is a being seen thing, too. Yeah.

Brian
There’s two levels to this in the way I look at it, Ani. That one level is there are lots of people in the world, and I would put myself in this category in my past, certainly, and I think still to some degree that are just visibility averse. They just don’t like to be seen. For whatever reason, being seen feels like it’s threatening or there’s negative consequences or they just plain don’t like it.

Ani
Okay. You’re talking about maybe this comes from conditioning, but also maybe it comes from conditioning?

Brian
Yeah, it comes from conditioning or conditioning. Exactly.

Ani
That’s level one. Yeah.

Brian
That’s one thing when entrepreneurs, small business owners, coaches consultants are having trouble, again, growing their business for more impact and more revenue, and there’s a visibility issue is the first question is, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more, is, are you visibility averse?

Ani
Okay, level one.

Brian
That’s level one question.

Ani
Answer that question for yourself, listeners.

Brian
Now, the other issue is that we live in an attention economy. We just live in an attention economy. Actually, nature is based on an attention economy.

Ani
Yeah, I could see that.

Brian
Nature is based on that, right? Right.

Ani
Like the The pretty flowers that the bees are attracted to. Exactly. Trying to say Peacock, but the other birds are coming to mind. Penguins, not that. The pretty birds. The Peacocks, feathers.

Brian
Colorful cardinals.

Ani
The colorful cardinal. Yeah.

Brian
So birds, bees, flowers.

Ani
Trees.

Brian
Trees, bucks, like the deer with the biggest rack, the elk with the biggest rack, the moose with the biggest horns. They’re like, oh, la, la. Those things, they capture your attention. And so nature actually also lives to a certain degree in an attention economy. Yeah. That survival, reproduction, propagation is really, to a large degree, based on attention, getting attention.

Ani
Well, that just put a different spin on everything for many of our listeners, I think. Because we’re like, I hate social media, but also there’s the birds and the bees, so there’s that.

Brian
Yeah. It’s already wired into our systems that attention equates to, well, let’s just say success. If we’re using success in nature in terms of propagating the species.

Ani
It’s more law of more life right there. Exactly. We want to, not We want to. The laws say law of more life. Everything’s expanding and evolving. Yeah, attention economy helps that continual involvement. Yeah.

Brian
We’re wired. Our physiology is wired to give more resources to those things that get and hold your attention. And by resources, we mean energy, time, money. In nature, Money isn’t like a thing the way we use money as humans, but certainly time. Bees spend a lot of time around flowers that are bright, and they spend a lot of energy getting to flowers that are bright. And animals spend a lot of energy and time getting to other animals that grab their attention.

Ani
And organizing themselves innately around those things, by the way.

Brian
Exactly. So This starts to build a little bit of an interesting scenario here because it may very well be that someone is attention averse. It also may be that someone is not attention averse, but nature is constructed around and our physiology is wired around naturally giving more resources to things that grab and hold our attention. Let’s just put that out right there. Then on top of that, then to your point around social media, the humans have built systems that actually take advantage of that innate physiological mechanism in us about attention.

Ani
Did you say what level two is? Because I’m not following you.

Brian
Level two is we are wired to pay attention.

Ani
Okay, so the first- First level is someone- might be attention averse.

Brian
You might be attention averse. When we’re talking about the levels of problems, the problems around your visibility issue and the problems around growing your business, because the first problem is you may just be averse to visibility. But the second problem is, we’re getting to the bulk of the second problem, it is based on the whole premise that we are wired to spend more time, energy, resources on things that grab and hold our attention.

Ani
Okay, so why is that a problem?

Brian
Because there are more things to pay attention to now more than ever.

Ani
And there will be in the future. Correct.

Brian
Laufmer, right? Laufmer. It’s more life. It used to be that there weren’t as many things grabbing for your attention. Right now, we have an attention magnet you’re carrying around in your pocket all day long.

Ani
You go to the gas station, there’s things that are flashing at you. You drive it on the highway, there’s things flashing at you. You can’t get away from it.

Brian
Can’t get away from it. Things, yeah. We got our phones in our pockets all day long. We’re getting bombarded with, yeah, social media and text and emails and you name it. But there’s literally always something now grabbing for your attention. It didn’t used to be that way. Before, we were carrying around phones in our pocket, for sure. There was not that degree of attention grabbing.

Ani
Then go another 100 years back and then another 100 years you can just see that there was just less grabbing for our attention in each of those time periods.

Brian
The things that really captured our attention were probably, well, more directly supported by our survival needs.

Ani
Yes, exactly. The attention thing really got sped up as technology really sped up. When we say technology, we’re not just talking about phones in your pocket. We’re talking about just technological advances, like the tractor, for example, and all that that did. Then whatever, technology came around the pipe and then really just propelled our evolution as a species technologically. Yes. Each time we have a big bump like that, I think it really adds to this attention issue. There’s more things to pay attention to.

Brian
More things to pay attention to. Even if you are not attention averse as a small business owner- There’s still the challenge. There’s still the challenge of attention issues, because here’s the thing, too. Before all of the bombardment on our attention systems, let’s say you’re a real estate agent. Let’s just say that’s your job. In the past, it was you were essentially competing against other real estate agents for attention. Now, if you’re a real estate agent, you’re competing against everything else that everyone experiences every day for their attention, not just other real estate agents.

Ani
Well, yeah. Then there’s the thing that you used to be competing against local people, and now you’re competing against everybody in the world to some degree.

Brian
Yeah, well, to some degree, too. But the point I was trying to make is that we’re always being bombarded so much by all the things that are trying to grab our attention that that’s exhausting for the nervous system. If you have something that’s actually really pertinent for someone, you have to actually somehow even rise above all the other stuff. It’s not only you’re competing against, again, other real estate agents or other things specific for the services you offer, you’re competing against- The fact that people are bombarded. Instagram, cat videos.

Ani
How I’m scanning that is for a person who’s trying to find solutions to their problems, too, because I’m going to change the metaphor from a real estate agent here for a second. Let’s say I have stress. I know I have stress. I know there are solutions to stress. I don’t know which solution to go with. Then I’m bombarded with different solutions to stress. Then I get confused. Not only now, do I not know what solution to use? I just am tired of even trying to figure it out because the whole thing is stressing me out. It’s a problem on both… Trying not to use the word consumer, but I’m going to use it. It’s a It’s a problem for the consumer, too. The consumer is also having a problem. It’s not just that the business owner or whatever needs to have more visibility, but the consumer is also a different consumer who is more stressed, more confused. Their attention is being zapped. That takes energy. There’s that, too.

Brian
Yeah, that’s the confluence of challenge that we’re dealing with, especially when we’re helping people, helping our clients become more visible because they know that that needs to happen in order for them to grow their business impact, where we’re coming at from this. What we’re really talking about is how attention happens in the first place and really what you’re competing against when you’re looking to become more visible. The other thing that you’re competing against, too, that’s inherent into social media stuff, remember, too, is if you’re scrolling through Instagram or through Facebook or through whatever other platform, is those platforms are paying attention to how long you spend on certain images, right? Exactly. And then they start. And so they know that if you’re spending more time on that image, it means that thing grabbed your attention. And then what the algorithm started doing, it started feeding you more things that are just like that image. Now your attention is even being grabbed more by the thing that you tipped off the algorithm that you were paying attention to, which means that now you’re paying attention to more of the of whatever video that is, and the consumer is not thinking anymore about how to solve the problem that they got on to social media to maybe look up to begin with.

Ani
They’re on something else.

Brian
They’re on to something else. If you’re experiencing, to your point, experiencing stress, and you get on social media, you may be looking for a meditation class or whatever it is that you think is going to be helpful for stress. On the way to finding that, a news article about something catches your attention. And so you stop and watch that one. And then before you know it, you have a ton of other news articles on that exact same thing showing up. And now you’re completely derailed from the reason you went out there in the first place because something else caught your attention.

Ani
Our attention is getting so bad as humans that I know we’re talking about social media, but those things happen everywhere now. I find myself even having a harder time sitting down and reading a magazine, for example. Exactly. Because I’ll sit down to listen to watch a magazine. My goodness, to read a magazine. I can’t even talk about it. It’s so distracting. I sit down to read a magazine and my attention is being caught by the thing that’s happening outside of the window or the notification on my phone or the thing that somebody else said in the room. It’s just harder to pay attention to anything, even if the algorithms aren’t feeding you stuff, which they are. Part of the reason our attention is getting so bad That is because of all the algorithms.

Brian
Yeah, right. We’re in this spiral. These are the real barriers when you’re talking about being, again, a small business owner or entrepreneur that is working on your own visibility to the end goal of connecting with customers and clients that you can really help, that you can really help them, and they actually need your help. But one of the barriers is they’re overwhelmed, their attention systems depleted and overwhelmed. That’s even if you don’t have a visibility issue. That you’ve got to find some way to overcome, to navigate the inherent challenges that people are wired to pay attention to the things that are more attractive to them. We’re going to talk about the four categories that will naturally attract attention, though, in a minute. It’s good to hopefully give you an idea of Where do you want to actually- This sounds pretty depressing so far. Yeah, where do you want to work the system? There is a solution to this.

Ani
I just want to bring up something, too, because some people recognize they have a visibility problem, and some people don’t, but they do have a visibility problem. I would say if you’re trying to grow your business and it’s not going swimmingly, at a pretty decent clip, that you’re very, very, very likely dealing with a visibility issue, even if you don’t recognize it’s a visibility issue. Just so you can You start orienting yourself around something that’s helpful. We see it all the time with clients. They don’t think they have a visibility issue when it comes up. I remember there was a client we were working with for about two years, and they were dealing with procrastination, decreased motivation, productivity, those kinds of things. It was about two years later that we discovered that he had a problem in the past where he had been fired from his job, and he still had all this guilt and shame wrapped It was a visibiliotomy around it. He wasn’t actually taking action because this block was really stopping him from moving forward. It was a visibility issue, but it was masquerading as a productivity issue and a motivation issue and all kinds of stuff.

Ani
Once we were able to release the shame and guilt around the job loss thing, then they could move forward. The productivity and motivation actually wasn’t so much of a problem. Then they could move forward with the things that really moved the needle, which was visibility.

Brian
Visibility, right. Great Great point. Now, what we have to realize, too, is both for ourselves and for your potential clients is that paying attention always costs something. There’s always a cost comes along with it. At the fundamental level, that cost is energy. It takes energy to pay attention. It even takes energy to pay attention to something that is really stimulating. Yeah, It’s even costing energy to do that.

Ani
Yeah. One of our kids is overseas right now and immersed in French culture for the first time. She sent me text recently and was like, I’m so hungry. I don’t understand why I’m so hungry. It makes perfect sense to me. She’s expending a ton of energy because there’s so many things she has to pay attention to right now. She has to pay attention to so many things, and of course, she’s hungry.

Brian
Yeah, and probably tired, too. You can fatigue really quickly. You have to realize for you as the individual, what you’re paying attention to is costing you something. You just want to put that out there. When you pay attention to what you’re paying attention to, if you have any issues with energy management, one of the places you can start looking at is, Well, what am I paying attention to and how much energy is that costing me? Because there’s always an exchange there.

Ani
That’s one of the things that I noticed for me. I have pretty darn good energy management because of the things that we do here, for sure. When my energy management starts to tip, I have a much decreased ability to consciously manage my attention.

Brian
Yeah. I Yeah. I’m not going to talk about it now, but we’ve done some past podcasts on dopamine and dopamine addiction and those sorts of things. A lot of what we’re talking about, too, actually ties into the dopamine dopamine and reward system because attention and reward systems go along together. If you’re like, what about dopamine? Go back and look at a couple of podcasts that we’ve done on motivation and dopamine, and there’s some good information in there. Because I also want to touch on Another thing you mentioned a little bit earlier, Ani, is that people’s capacities to pay attention to non-stimulating information is basically gone. Because when there is a lot of stimulating information look at, which is basically what’s going on right now, we’re always being bombarded with the brightest, the fastest, the shiniest information, your ability to sit down and read a textbook and learn non-stimulating stuff is almost impossible. It’s very difficult to do that.

Ani
Yeah, most people don’t practice that thing.

Brian
Yeah. I find even myself, I used to just devour technical information. Over the past couple of years, just by being on the computer more and those kinds of things, I have to work at it now. I have to work at sitting and really read. Sometimes it’s like I have this urge to just get up and walk away from it and I have to hold myself there and be like, No, focus on what you’re reading right now. I just really noticed the draw to put it down because- To go to something stimulating. To go to something stimulating, right? Because that’s the natural progression of how our nervous systems are wired. Let’s just say that’s what we’re all up against right now in your business. That’s what is getting in the way of you deepening your connection and communicating with other humans. Because in order to connect and communicate with other humans, you need to be able to grab and hold their attention. Because if you can’t, think about, have you ever been at a conference and you start talking with somebody and three minutes in the conversation, they’re pulling the phone out of their pocket and they’re looking at their phone while they’re having a conversation with you, or instead of having a conversation with you, that’s what we’re talking about.

Brian
There’s a 30-second window oftentimes in order to really get someone’s attention, then grab someone’s attention. If you have a visibility aversion, you can see how quick that window would eclipse, and then that’s going to get in the way of you growing your business because you have to be able to connect with customers, with clients, in order to actually have a conversation with them to find out, are you a right fit for them? Do you match? Can you actually help them? Are they the right fit for you? Where do you go from there? That’s all part of a conversation that needs to happen, and it needs to happen where you’re both paying attention.

Ani
Yeah, and then to actually follow up with that person and maintain the connection and conversation because they’re going to go off and get distracted and their attention is going to get drawn. They might be off down a different rabbit hole or whatever.

Brian
Yeah. There’s two things maybe we can talk about when we talk about your visibility problem. Again, some people don’t have a visibility problem, so we’re not talking to you anymore. We’re talking to people who are like, Listen, I’m pretty sure I have a visibility issue. I’m a wallflower at parties. I don’t naturally like to engage. Maybe you’re more of an introvert than an extrovert. You just like watching and observing. You don’t like the spotlight necessarily. Those are all potential flags for having a visibility issue.

Ani
Also, probably Other flags include, I just can’t get myself motivated to fill in the blank on the things you know you need to do that will increase visibility, like get articles, get on podcasts, get on media, create videos, do your LinkedIn Live, or write newsletters or whatever. It’s that thing, too. It’s not just I’m a wallflower. It’s like, I know there’s whatever that I really should or could be doing for my business, and I’m not getting into really swift action on I’m not making it part of my regular routine.

Brian
Before we talk about potentially what the blocks are around being seen or visibility, let’s talk about when we go back to the way the nervous system works for a moment, the four things that people naturally and readily pay attention to because of the way that we’re wired. You might be able to use some of this information in terms of, Okay, so can I use that to help my visibility issue so that I can actually connect with clients and consumers more readily? The first thing, and this one isn’t a surprise to anybody at all, probably, but the first thing that humans naturally pay attention to is threat and danger. That’s actually true for all animals. All animals are naturally, naturally orient to danger. If you go back and look at, it was episode 84 of our podcast. I actually looked it up. You looked it up. That was impressive. I think it’s episode 84. No, I went back and looked it up. Episode 84, we did a podcast on debunking the negativity bias.

Ani
Oh, yeah, that was a really good one.

Brian
We debunked the negativity bias, and we talked more about the way the physiology works around threat, danger, protection, orientation. It’s a great episode you might want to go back and look at. Because we don’t have a negativity bias, we actually have a different bias. I don’t want to give it away. Go back and look at episode 84.

Ani
I’m just thinking about this concept of threat and danger and how much our attention is… A lot of people’s attention is being drawn nowadays by the threat and danger that seems all around us in our world.

Brian
Yes, exactly.

Ani
In our world, and one of the things that we hear from clients and students all the time is how tiring it is. Two, they’re trying to grow their business, they’re trying to keep their focus, they’re trying to keep their productivity, and their attention just keeps getting drawn to threat and danger that’s going on around us and in the world. It’s exhausting, and they also want to help. They see those things and they really want to help. Just normalizing the fact that, yeah, your attention is being drawn and physiologically, that makes sense. That it is. Maybe even knowing that will help you to make decisions about where you want to put your attention because maybe you do want to pay attention to those things and do something about it. Also, not that you don’t want to pay attention, but maybe you can have a better awareness that your attention is being drawn because it’s a threat and danger issue, and then you can make conscious choices.

Brian
Yeah. Just to build on top of that really quick is some organizations, media outlets, people use threat and danger as a way intentionally in order to manipulate behavior. And attention. Because they know that’s exactly what you’re going to pay attention to most readily is the danger and the threats stuff. It works. Okay. It works to a degree, and sometimes a large degree. But the caveat with using that type of attention-grabbing mechanism, especially as a small business owner and entrepreneur, is that using a threat attention capture is a great way to get people moving, but they may not necessarily move towards you. When there’s a fire, It’s hard to get people to move in one direction when there’s a fire. It’s like- It’s scattered. It’s a fire. Calmly walk down these stairs. We’re all going to go in the same direction. People just scatter when there’s a fire or when there’s some type of emergency going on. When we use some type of threat or danger device intentionally hoping that it’s going to actually get people to engage with you, they may just run in different directions. It doesn’t necessarily work I don’t think any of our listeners are actually doing that for…

Ani
They’re having it done with and around them.

Brian
Yes, exactly. It’s probably being done to you from other sources. Just be aware of that. But that’s the thing that people most readily pay attention to. The next thing that humans will most readily pay attention to, actually, I would say all mammals. Is this also?

Ani
How many times does Brian say animal on the podcast? I think we should have some Well, because… No, I’m just thinking- It’s true.

Brian
Like your cats and your dogs are doing the same thing.

Ani
We should have some contest sometime. We’ll go back and we’ll figure out how many times you’ve said animal. Okay, Mammle.

Brian
Okay, so the humans- We’ll do a Mammle contest. The humans are the mammals. The mammals are humans. So it’s actually- I’m listening to you day after day, and then every once in a while, you say Mammle, and every time you do, I’m like, There we go. Say it again. Mammle is okay. I don’t know why. It’s social cues, especially faces and eyes. Even babies, when they’re very, very, very young, are organized naturally around facial cues. Because, again, that’s a way that… I’m going to say it again, a mammal. A mammal can determine whether or not a person or another animal is safe is based on their facial cues. Reptiles don’t do that. Reptiles don’t change their facial cue based on how they’re feeling, but mammals do. All mammals do.

Ani
That is very interesting.

Brian
That’s because mammals have a ventral vagal complex conduit where reptiles don’t. That ventral vagal complex, which wires itself into the face, the throat, the eyes, the inner ears is a way that we socially project safety, or the opposite of safety, but it’s done through facial cues. That’s a natural thing that pick up on. That’s why it’s important as an entrepreneur or small business owner that you find a way to radiate through your face a sense of warmth, safety, inviting, because that’s the way you’ll actually cue into people more.

Ani
Radiate through your face.

Brian
Radiate through your face. If you look through your magazines or if you’re looking on social media, we’re attracted to people who are smiling, who have shiny eyes, and we’re less attracted to people who are flat inside, flat eyes, grumpy, grumpy mouths. I’m using emotion, although I shouldn’t really do that. But downward, downward-turned lips attract less than upward turn lips.

Ani
There’s actually research to that attractive… I’m going to use that in air quotes, attractive people sell more things. Subjectively, attractive people sell more things. There’s definitely something to that. But the thing is, the crappy thing we do in our heads about, especially women, I think, do this, Oh, I look so bad. I look so old. Like, whatever. Think about somebody who just is really alive inside, and they are so attractive. Even if there is no makeup, fancy jewelry, wonderful clothes or whatever, they’re just so attractive. There’s something about being lit up inside that really is magnetizing. So yeah, about maybe doing things with your clothes or your makeup or whatever. It’s not just that. It’s like turning the lights on is huge.

Brian
I just feel like I need to say, too, that definitely transcends even body type. Because in our society, certain body types types get preferential treatment versus other body types. But when you really meet somebody who’s their eyes are lit up, to your point, Ani, there’s vitality flowing through them, and that vitality shines through the person’s eyes. And there’s this warmth, it’s inviting. There’s a lightness that radiates from people’s faces, and that’s very captivating.

Ani
And you can do something about that, by the way. There’s things that you can do to really help that. It’s not just you’re born this way thing. There are things you can do to help that. I was thinking about an example that was a born this way thing. I remember being at a meeting with colleagues at some point and talking about a fellow colleague that we were both recognizing, we each knew from different places and having this moment of like, Oh, my gosh, they’re so captivating. We were trying to describe this person, and the conversation was just about like, God, I don’t know what it is, but they’re their eyes and their smile and just exude this radiating from their faces, like you said. I’m sure you can think of a person like that in your life who either you’ve met personally or you’ve seen on the screen. I’m toggling through a few of my own head. Yeah, you can definitely do something about that.

Brian
Definitely do that. That’s all these practices that bring more vitality reality into the body and into the opening up those emotional blocks. That’s all the work that we do with our clients in here at this Matic Cushing Academy. But that’s a thing that you can do for sure.

Ani
I think one of the things that clients who work with our team, one of the things that people come for is to stop repelling clients. Let me just take a moment here because actually what we’re trying to help them do is to get into this place where they are actually increasing seeing their vitality so they’re naturally magnetic. But the way that it shows up is I’m doing the things, and I don’t seem to be landing the deals. So I’m having the conversations, I’m going to networking, I’m posting, I have a newsletter, I have workshops, whatever. But people don’t seem to be coming towards me. So one of the things that we say about that is, are you repelling? Does it seem like you’re repelling clients? And if that’s you, if you feel like that, then that’s what we’re talking about There’s ways to actually turn that around. Turn that around. So you can be magnetizing.

Brian
Yeah, awesome. The third one, this is another important one, is novelty. Something that stands out from the crowd, something that is just different. Novelty means different. Different. When a person is scanning through a crowd, we have these beautiful cardinals around our house, and so these bright red cardinals. Oftentimes, I’m looking through the backyard, and right now, there’s snow on the ground. There’s white, and there’s green, and there’s brown around us right now. I’ll be scanning through the woods, and I’ll see a red light bulb. I’ll be like, There it is. There’s the cardinal. I’m not sure how that works for survival instincts for the cardinal because it seems like there should be other animals that are like, Hey, there’s a cardinal. Anyway, but they stand out, and so they capture your attention. Now I’m paying attention to the cardinal. Again, that’s costing me a lot me something energy because I’m paying attention, but it also brings me a lot of joy, and I feel great watching the cardinal. But here’s the point. I get back to the point here is that it’s about novelty. When you’re scanning in the environment and you come across something that is different than everything else in the environment, it activates the Salience network in your brain.

Brian
The Salience network is the part of your brain that pays attention to something and then asks a question. It asks a question is, do I need to pay attention to this thing? Is it safe for me to pay attention to this thing? Am I paying attention to it because there’s a potential danger that links back to that first level. But then it also asked, you asked a question, Am I paying attention to this thing because there’s some inherent benefit to paying attention to it. When we use novelty in a conscious way as a way to engage people’s attention, it has to be different enough where it stands out, but it can’t be so different that it activates a person’s threat response. That’s a really important balance you have to gage. In other words, if I go to a conference and I’m with a bunch of people, and how can I stand out? I’m going to wear a hat. I’m going to wear my cappy. You do. My cappy makes me stand out a little bit. They’re like, Oh, there’s Brian, because they just see a cap going through the crowd. Short cap. There he is.

Brian
There’s short cappy. That’s my cap. But If I wore no other clothes and just a cap- Well, then you’d really stand out. I would really stand out, but that could activate certain people’s threat responses.

Ani
You could do that in Vermont as long as you left the house like that, by the way.

Brian
It would be legal, but it still could activate people’s threat responses.

Ani
It would be illegal in other places.

Brian
Then you have a bunch of people run a scattering.

Ani
That’s right.

Brian
Just like I said, a fire off thing. That would be too different and would activate people’s threat responses. You have to find the balance between what’s different enough that it’s engaging for people, of course, smile on your face thing, but not so different that people won’t engage with it because it doesn’t feel safe for them.

Ani
I can hear our listeners going saying things to themselves like, Well, damn, because I don’t know what that is for me, and I don’t think I really stand out, or how am I ever going to find that thing in me? Hey, actually, don’t I worry so much about it because every single one of us has that thing. When we can tap into our authenticity, it’s easy. What’s not easy is when you try something else, not authentic to you. So authentically, each of us is our own unique, brilliant, beautiful little flower. So tap into your authenticity, and what makes you different will naturally emerge.

Brian
I just happen to have a bald head, and so a cap works perfect. That makes you different? Yeah, well, the cap works perfect.

Ani
Is an authentic… Is an authentic expression for you. It’s this external thing that actually says a lot about who you are authentically as a person.

Brian
That and sneakers.

Ani
Okay, I’m It’s just your dad wears a little cap, too, by the way, which is so cute. There’s something in his authenticity that has a little cap. Cap also. App essence as well.

Brian
Cappy. All right. The fourth thing that attracts is if it matches a person’s current needs. In other words, if someone is hungry, then what’s going to capture their attention is food. If someone is thirsty, what’s going to capture their attention is something to drink.

Ani
That works for all mammals.

Brian
For all mammals, yeah. If they’re cold, something warm is going to capture their attention. That’s the fourth thing. I might think, Well, how the heck am I going to use that? Thing. Well, the service that you provide, if you know that it gets a consistent result, and the more you can match that to a perennial need that people have, then as that need cycles back around, if you understand when a person’s need cycles into that phase, then you’re more likely to, again, capture that person’s attention.

Ani
Well, another thing is, if you have a visibility block, likely you’re not being as clear as you possibly could be. When you’re clear, people understand how what you’re offering meets their needs. But if you’re not being clear, they won’t. A visibility block will disallow you from having clear communication and clear call to action.

Brian
Yeah. Let’s segue into that, Ani, as we move towards the conclusion of our time together today, is if you have any of those flags of potentially having a visibility block or visibility The question is, ask yourself, what blocks do you have around being seen?

Ani
What the hell are you going to do about it?

Brian
Then what the hell are you going to do about it?

Ani
No, but literally, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to try to excavate your block forever? Because people do that, Brian. They’re just like, I have a visibility block, and I’m going to just keep going down that rabbit hole over and over and over and over again. What they end up is just continuing to under-earth the same pattern over and over again. Or you could work on your pattern. Yeah.

Brian
Because we’re here at the Somatic Coaching Academy, and we use sensation-based motivation coaching, the question we always ask is that when you are experiencing a visibility issue, where do you feel that in your body, and what does it feel like? That’s the first step in this process is to beginning identifying the root sensory component of the, let’s say, visibility aversion pattern. You have to understand what’s at the root of it. That’s really Where does that first start? That first step is becoming aware of what actually feels like in your body when you have a fear of being seen or an aversion to being seen.

Ani
If you’re listening to us, we know that you’re a person who is probably already professionally working with people. You’re a person who really cares about making an impact in the world. And what we know, because this is the case with everybody who’s around us in the Smatic Coaching Academy, is you really can make quite a profound impact. The question is, Will you actually move forward and do something more with your visibility? So I just want you to think about it for yourself in your life right now. Where are you at, personally and professionally? And just ask yourself, honestly, Honestly, have I been stuck or plateaued for a little while? Because likely, visibility is exactly what you need to move to the next level. But it’s incumbent upon you to do something about it and to empower yourself to take the next step. So we invite you to take that step because we know that what you have to offer is really important, and it really matters, and it really can do good things for people in the world. But you’ve You got to take the step to do it.

Brian
Yeah. The change that you are meant to bring here into the world won’t happen unless you can connect with people in a really authentic way and grab and hold their attention for a long enough period of time to transmit your gift, your purpose to them to help them change their life.

Ani
And we can help you do that if you’d like to have some help with that. I mean, hey, if you are hearing us now, you’ve listened to this entire episode, which means that we have captured your attention for what? Like 30 minutes? So, hey, thanks for spending your time and energy here with us. Every time you do and you’re listening to this Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We really appreciate it. And when you move into programs and you do courses with us and coaching with us and things like that, we know that we’re going to be able to meet you in that exchange of energy, and we really appreciate it. So we I love having you as a part of the community. For now, it’s time to go.

Brian
We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for spending your week with us, friends. Take care. Bye.