Eye contact is effortless without emotional blocks.
Eye contact is effortless without emotional blocks.
Story time! I wanted to run a fun party: "Make 100% eye contact or get sent to jail!" But I didn’t want to force people to make eye contact… I wanted everyone to be genuinely comfortable! How?
Consider: Eye contact is effortless without emotional blocks.1 If you have trouble making eye contact, you’re probably held back by emotional blocks. And these blocks are probably to help you stay safe… so forcing eye contact could even be harmful!
So what if I helped attendees notice and integrate their blocks?
I started with a small experiment
Here’s how I remember improvising the first activity:
Close your eyes. Settle in…
Recall a time where you felt really comfortable making eye contact. When it was natural and easy. What was it like?…
Bring on the feeling in your body…
Does everyone have it? Raise your hand…
OK… Sit in that feeling for a minute… Remember this feeling…
In a moment, I’m going to tell you to open your eyes, and make silent eye contact with your partner while still holding this feeling, ok? …
OK, open your eyes. Have the feeling… Do you notice any resistance coming up? Notice it… What does it say?…
Bring the feeling you want to have to the resistance, see what happens…
Keep making eye contact, holding that feeling…
My strategy was to have each person notice the parts of them that liked eye contact, bring those parts into dialogue with their blocks/resistance to eye contact, and watch what happens.
For some attendees, this one activity was enough.
Here’s what one attendee said:
The transition moment for me was when you prompted us to think about an occasion where eye contact felt easy. I thought about a cat that I once lived with, I would be proactively looking him in the eye and saying how much I love him hahaha. That felt very natural and easy. Then, with that feeling I was able to start appreciating the people that I was having eye contact with without the awkwardness. Also, more curiosity aroused as well!! (Since for me it’s easy to look at something for a long time when I’m really curious about it.)
After a few similar activities, most attendees had achieved comfort.
But a few needed individual help
For example, there was this one guy who was still having trouble. So I instructed him 1-on-1 using not-dissimilar methods. At some point, I asked him what his resistance said, and to his own surprise, it said I’m afraid of heartbreak.
So it seemed like, in his mind, sometimes when you make eye contact with others, you fall in love with them… and sometimes that’s followed by heartbreak. (Which he would like to avoid.)
So, in a way, his avoiding eye contact was completely rational. (Or rather: locally optimal.) If he had crudely forced himself to make eye contact, it’s quite possible that he could’ve actually gotten hurt.
Next I asked him, “How would you like to manage those risks?”
He thought about it for a moment, said something about making eye contact with a different mindset. It seemed reasonable to me so I didn’t question it.
My final instruction: “How does what you want to be doing/feeling feel in your body? … Allow that feeling as much as you can.”
He had no trouble making infinite eye contact after that.
Facilitating rapid growth
Part of my motivation for running this event was to practice facilitating rapid personal growth for a whole group of people at the same time.
Usually, I only do this one-on-one. For example, the techniques I led the group through were very similar to the techniques I led this man who claims to have resolved his lifelong anxiety after talking to me once through. (Yes, wack, I know.)
Within an hour, all fifteen attendees were enjoying present, continuous eye contact!
We stress-tested this with one-on-one conversational eye contact, silent eye contact, group conversational eye contact, and everything else we could think of… and went undefeated.
Everyone clapped!
What attendees said
For a moment, the vibes of this event reminded me of a molly party I was at last week.
Since your event [two weeks ago], I'm far more aware of both the eye contact I give and the eye contact I receive. I'm especially aware of how good I feel when I receive it and so I've been trying to give it out more, anticipating that others feel the same.
The 100% eye contact party
The party needed an eye contact enforcement mechanism. (Without one, attendees would forget about the eye contact and it would devolve into — god forbid— a normal SF party.)
So I designed a dictatorless dystopia:
Three strikes and you must go to jail. One strike each time you're caught not making eye contact during conversation. Please give strikes to autist offenders. Please send three-strikers to jail.
To attain parole, you must make silent, present eye contact with another jailee for two minutes straight. […]
Now all I had to do was craft a catchy thumbnail:
and title:
and invite people.
40 showed
I began the event by facilitating activities like those from before. It was definitely harder with more than twice as many pairs of eyes, but for the most part, it worked.
For the people who needed extra help, I offered 1-on-1 assistance.
What it looked like
Group eye contact was so goofy!
What attendees said
The design made it easier to access a range from flirty and fun to deep and serious. The event was higher intensity by default.
It was super super intense. I remember desperately wanting it to be over, but it was still a lot of fun. My first 1-on-1 conversation was very fun and lasted over an hour.
The jail was a hilarious idea and added excellent vibes.
Eye contact was kinda hard and I went to jail a lot… but I had a lot of good conversations, and the party felt very intimate.
I liked experimenting with eye contact from different heights. I made eye contact while looking down for almost the first time and felt stronger.
I felt very connected to everyone afterwards and felt very open, present and happy.
Overall, I think it really worked! I'm excited to run more events like this.
Stay connected?
Coming soon to this blog:
How I turned awkwardness into a sport
Peculiar advice for running peculiar events
Rapid personal strategies, no eye contact required
If you liked this, consider tweeting about it.
Also, if you’d like to be invited to my future events in San Francisco, hit “subscribe” on this page. (I may also run a few events in NYC soon.)
Thanks to Leo, Shaul, Lika, Eliza, Jinny, and The SF Commons for making these events wonderful. Thanks to Stag Lynn, @42irrationalist, Richard Bartlett, and Kasra for help editing this post.
@ChrisChipMonk, chris@chrislakin.com, chrislakin.com/now
All good things are like this.