This season there is a new television show called Lie to Me.  You only need to tune into another show, won’t name any names here, to discover how content-oriented, line-driven and superficial they are, to appreciate that Lie to Me has a lot more to offer.  In Lie to Me, the lead character uses his highly trained observation skills to help solve crimes, ferret out useful information and reveal what people are attempting to hide.  For him this is a double edged sword.  While he is able to discover where kidnappers have hidden the young girl he is also able to tell when his daughter or partner has attempted to mislead him.  He seems to be without emotion, which can be one of the consequences of intense external observation without an equal dose of self knowledge.

You may want to take in an episode of Lie to Me.  It will likely be entertaining whether or not you are willing to admit you may have much greater perceptual abilities than you currently access.  You can watch past Lie to Me episodes for free on www.hulu.com; just search for Lie to Me.

While learning NLP we developed cutting edge visual and auditory perceptual acuity, but the real trick to tapping into our depth of perception was opening to the streams of data available from kinesthetic awareness.  Tapping into physical sensations isn’t complicated, and it can be quite a bit of fun to practice.  While the source of your attention may seem to be your mind it can also be other places.  Moving your center of attention from your mind into your heart, opens you to emotion; migrating further south by movivg the center of your attention all the way to your belly, opens you to vast undefined spaces.

Parts of you always know the truth.  However, the limited perspective available to your thinking always knows something, but seldom knows the truth.  You can practice your observation skills while playing poker, low stakes until you learn how to read your opponent please.  During workshops we have people learn to observe whether their partner has a great poker hand or a lousy poker hand.  I remember a participant, a corporate trainer, who discovered that when she was looking for cues from her partner to determine the quality of his hand, she was accurate about fifty percent of the time.  But if she closed her eyes, dropping into her kinesthetic knowing, she was right one hundred percent of the time.

Another way to enhance your sensory acuity is to begin walking with your eyes closed.  Have someone assist you in this if you are around cliffs or fast moving buses.  With your eyes closed you will rely on senses other than your external visual.  Your external auditory and your kinesthetic senses will get a workout.  Several years ago on my way to lead a course in Houston, I closed my eyes when I left my home and opened them after I arrived in Houston.  I, of course, did not drive myself to the airport, nor did I fly the plane.  But I did discover that without all the normal visual input I had no jet lag at all and arrived in Houston relaxed and ready to go.

If, like most people, you depend primarily on your sense of hearing, auditory, you can carry earplugs around and wear them from time to time to enhance your ability to see.  Watch TV with the sound off and you will perceive all kinds of things that you wouldn’t when you are tangled in the content of what the characters are saying.  As your observation skills improve you will be able to tell a lousy actor from a good one, in that the good actor is far more congruent (their behaviors matching their content), while lousy actors (friends) will often provide such mixed messages that you can’t tell what they are saying anymore than they can.

Tap into Lie to Me at hulu.com and let me know what you think.  Bridge the gap between watching the show and learning these observation skills.  I will be delighted to assist you in the process.

The movie isn’t out on DVD.  Netflix ain’t got it.  Oddly, I think you would like it.  It is about a man, Jason Robards, who’s sister comes to visit.  She brings a blue parakeet, a dead gold fish, two trunks and a six year old son.  She goes out for a pack of filter tipped cigarettes and comes back seven years later.  He has given away the parakeet, flushed the gold fish down the toilet, she wants the two trunks and the kid has effortlessly grown seven years older.  The movie has dazzling dialog as social workers try and take the kid away because Jason is just too light, fun and anti-culture.  I am amazed at how much of the dialogue I remember and how seeing this good a movie reminds me that I have let my criteria for movies slide pretty low.

Dare I go on?  You will find me to be passionate, endlessly, about what I am passionate about.  The female social worker falls for Jason, of course.  She spends the night, undercutting her possible relationship with the other social worker, also of course.  The next morning as she is asking for a key there is a knock at the door.  She says “You better get that.”  He says “Is that OK?  ”I have nobody to hide from she says” after the first blush of romance with her new man.  He goes to the door, it is the male social worker.  She, runs as fast as she can into the closet.  Guess she did have someone to hide from.  The male social worker comes in, and says “Where is she?”  Jason says “She is in the closet.”  ”No, really, where is she, her parents are worried about her and so am I.”

“Really, she is in the closet, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

The male social worker goes to the closet, opens it, looks for too long, slowly and carefully closes the closet door to about eight inches.  He walks back over and says “She really is in the closet.  What is she doing in the closet?”

“Maybe she likes closets?  Shouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

The male and Jason proceed to have the conversation they would have if she wasn’t in the closet, interrupted once by Jason walking over and handing a cup of coffee into the closet.

Back to Jerry,  I mean what really is the point of life anyway? He says smiling.  That is not a rhetorical question; I hope.

Love, Me

PS  There is more fun dialogue.  Jason says to the social worker “She, the sister, would do anything for her son but get married.”

“Funny, for a while she would marry anybody, then, when she had her son she wouldn’t marry anybody at all.  Not being sure what last name to give her son she was hesitant to give him a first name.  I told him that he could have any name he wanted until he was thirteen and then he had to settle on one name.  Dog’s names were big for a while, Rover, Spot, names like that.  Just last week he came back from the library with a new card with the name Dr Sidney Rosenberg on it.”