The Art of Seeing

Sometimes the most important education has nothing to do with the job you were hired to do.

When I wrote The Adventure of Becoming, I promised to share a few more stories from the journey. As I began writing this next article, I found myself returning to a question I'd never really asked.

Looking back at the different careers I've had—fashion, music, event production, and now coaching—I wondered what thread connected them.

For years, I probably would have answered that it was the pursuit of creativity: the need to make things, produce things, and keep bringing new ideas into the world. I've always been prolific. But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that each of those careers traces back to a lesson I first encountered in New York more than thirty years ago.

At twenty-two, I thought I was simply moving to New York to see what the world had in store for me. I had no job, no plan beyond getting there. Looking back, I think I was really moving there to begin learning how to see.

Like many recent college graduates, my family gathered to celebrate my grandfather's birthday just a few weeks before I left. Somewhere in the middle of the party, I slipped upstairs, called a travel agent, and bought a one-way ticket to New York City. I practically floated back downstairs, bursting with excitement to announce the news.

I can still picture my mother's face. At the time, I saw possibility. Looking back, I can also see the loss and uncertainty she must have felt. I had walked into a family celebration and, with all the confidence of twenty-two, dropped a life-changing announcement into the middle of the room. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. I simply hadn't yet learned to notice how news like that lands in other people's hearts.

A few weeks later, I was living in a tiny apartment at 79th and York with four other women from DePauw University. My bedroom had been carved out of the living room with a temporary wall, barely large enough for a futon and a small dresser. Every morning began the same way: I'd fold up my futon just to make enough room to leave my room. My clothes hung in the broom closet beside the front door, next to the tiny kitchen where my roommates enthusiastically cooked their way through New York's incredible food scene. By morning, my clothes often carried hints of cumin and cardamom. I probably looked more put together than I smelled.

On my first Monday in New York, I started visiting temp agencies. One of them sent me to Ralph Lauren.

Twenty-third birthday at Ralph Lauren. A surprise cake and card from the team.

The assignment was supposed to last a week. Instead, the Director of Special Projects offered me a full-time position in the Public Relations department. I thought I had landed a job at one of the world's great fashion companies. I didn't realize I had also found one of my greatest teachers.

People often think of Ralph Lauren as a clothing company. Certainly, beautiful clothes surrounded us every day, but what struck me wasn't the clothing. It was the extraordinary level of care that went into everything. Lighting, flowers, music, hospitality, furniture, artwork—nothing felt accidental. Every decision seemed to begin with a simple question:

How will this make someone feel?

It wasn't about decoration. It was about experience.

Mostly I answered phones and stuffed envelopes and packed up garment bags, but one lucky afternoon I sat in on a presentation for the next season's blazers. The garments spread across the conference table weren't samples destined for a showroom or jackets a customer would eventually try on. They were design prototypes—working ideas meant to help the team evaluate the collection.

Ralph studied one blazer for a moment before quietly saying, "I'd like to see it without the crest." Someone reached for a seam ripper. He stopped them. "No," he said. "I'd like to see a new jacket that never had the crest sewn on. I can still see the thread holes." The prototype wasn't wrong. It simply couldn't answer the question he was asking.

Once the crest had been stitched onto the fabric, the jacket carried the memory of that decision. Even after the stitching was removed, the tiny holes remained. They interrupted his ability to see the design clearly, to evaluate the line as though the crest had never existed. He wasn't asking for another prototype because he demanded perfection. He was asking for one because he cared enough to see the idea without compromise.

That moment has stayed with me for more than thirty years.

At the time, I thought we were discussing a blazer. Now I realize we were discussing something much larger. Care changes what you're capable of seeing. Everyone looks. Few people see.

Working at Ralph Lauren didn't teach me to notice details. It taught me that what we choose to notice reveals what we care about.

When I later produced large-scale events, success wasn't determined by what happened under the spotlight. It was shaped by the thousands of quiet decisions that happened beforehand. The way guests entered a room. The placement of a sign. The lighting before anyone arrived. The music people didn't consciously hear but somehow felt. Those details rarely drew attention to themselves, yet together they created an experience people remembered long after the event was over.

Onstage with BOTTOM, learning lessons I didn't yet have words for.

Years later, standing onstage, I realized I wasn't just playing songs. I was watching people. I was learning how a pause can change a room, how silence can speak louder than volume, and how the smallest details often carry the greatest weight.

I thought I was learning music. I was really learning to see.

Today I see that lesson every day at the YMCA.

People often assume coaching is about exercises, repetitions, and programs. Those things matter, of course, but they aren't the heart of the work. The heart of the work is paying attention. I notice how someone walks into the room before they say hello. I notice how they shift their weight when they stand, the hesitation before stepping onto a box, the shoulder that rises just a little too early, or the confidence that quietly returns before they recognize it themselves. My clients don't need to notice those things. That's my job.

The older I get, the more I believe that excellence is rarely found in the spotlight. It is built quietly beforehand, in the unseen decisions that prepare the way for everything that follows. It's the rehearsal no one attends, the paragraph rewritten one more time, the handwritten note, the chair moved six inches, the extra five minutes spent making something just a little more welcoming than it needed to be.

Coaching at the Y and still practicing the art of seeing.

Looking back, I don't think working at Ralph Lauren taught me about fashion. It taught me to notice. It taught me that beauty isn't decoration; it's communication. Ralph taught me that what we choose to notice reveals what we care about, and that care sharpens our vision. Once we begin to care deeply enough, we start seeing things that were invisible before—not because they suddenly appeared, but because we've changed.

I've spent much of my life thinking I was learning different professions.

Fashion.

Music.

Event production.

Coaching.

Writing.

Perhaps I've been studying the same thing all along.

In the end, perhaps the greatest skill we can learn isn't how to do something well. It's how to truly see.

Looking back, I wonder how many of us only later realize what we were learning all along.