The Power of Being Seen: Building a Foundation of Love
In this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, I dive into the first of four foundations essential for building a life of purpose and meaningful relationships: to be seen.
The Foundation of Being Seen
As Brené Brown beautifully puts it in her book “The Gifts of Imperfection,” we cultivate love “when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known.” This captures what I believe we’re all searching for – to be truly seen for who we are.
Henry David Thoreau observed that “the mass of men and women lead lives of quiet desperation.” In my years of coaching and development work across different environments – churches, businesses, even bars – I’ve noticed this desperation often stems from a deep longing to be loved. And how can we be loved if we’re not first seen?
Seeing Ourselves First
Before we can genuinely see others, we need to see ourselves correctly. When Jesus tells us to “love your neighbor as yourself,” it prompts an important question: how well do we actually love ourselves?
The meanest person to you is often… you. The things you say to yourself when you mess up are probably harsher than anything anyone else has ever said to you. This is why we must start by asking: “Do I see myself as someone worthy of being loved right now?” Not when I’m perfect – but right now, just as I am.
You were created on purpose and for a purpose. You were made in the image of God, given unique abilities and talents for a specific purpose. This makes you inherently worthy of love – not based on performance, but on who you are.
The Challenge of Seeing Others
We often practice what I call “selective blindness” – choosing not to see certain people because seeing them might require something from us. We do this with people who are different – different countries, different races, different faiths, different politics, different economic status.
Our technological habits make this worse. Our obsession with smartphones and social media inhibits our ability to truly see others, leading to increased loneliness and disconnection.
The God Who Sees
In Genesis 16, we find the story of Hagar, who after being mistreated, encounters God in the desert. She calls Him “El Roi” – the God who sees me. This reveals something fundamental about God’s character: He sees us completely – in our best and worst moments, what we can become, and what we’re being healed from. He then invites us to see others the same way.
Your Challenge This Week
Try one of these practices:
- Delete all social media from your phone for seven days and reclaim time to see the people in your life
- Increase your commitment to eye contact and active listening
- When someone speaks, practice repeating back what you heard and asking, “Am I hearing you correctly?”
Remember: God is for you, not against you. He is near, not far away. And He created you on purpose and for a purpose.
Join me next week as we explore the second foundation: to be known.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ The most vicious critic in your life might be you
⚡️ Being seen is the beginning of being loved
⚡️ Selective blindness is a major barrier to meaningful relationships
⚡️ You can’t love others well if you haven’t learned to love yourself
⚡️ God sees you fully—and still loves you deeply
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “When you see yourself, you often reject yourself.”
⚡️ “To be fully known and truly loved is well, a lot like being loved by God.” – Tim Keller
⚡️ “Selective blindness lets us excuse ourselves from love.”
⚡️ “Technology is stealing your chance to be seen and to see others.”
⚡️ “You are worthy of love—right now, just as you are.”
Episode Resources:
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TRANSCRIPT
When you really blow it, when you really screw up, the things that you say to yourself about yourself in your brain are some of the meanest things that anyone’s probably ever said to you. And you don’t think anything about it. You’re like, well, I’m just saying it to myself. Well, you are, but it means that when you see yourself, you reject yourself. Created on purpose and for purpose. All right, welcome back to another episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host.
stoked you’re back with us today as we take the next step walking through the four foundations of the next module of the Rogue Collective Coaching that we’re developing. Once again, as you’ve been going through this series, say, man, this is some stuff I’d like to really get some coaching, some development in. You can get more information at it at our website, roguecollectivecoaching.com, roguecollectivecoaching.com. You can also go over to daronearlewine.com if you want. You can schedule a 30 minute
discovery call with me, jump on a call, talk about where you’re at, where you want to go, what that could look like, look at trying to maybe put you in a group of folks that are walking through this process or maybe you’re at a position within a company where you say, you know what, our people need, we need to invest in our people. And would love for you to reach out and for you to reach out in that way. Working with about six companies right now.
And I do get questions from people that are like, well, we’re like, we’re not a Christian company. Like you can’t come in here and talk about Jesus. none of the companies that I’m working with are Christian companies. That’s because a company can’t be Christian. They can just be a company that moves dirt or sells power, or maybe they print things. Lots of different kinds of companies that I work with, they manufacture stuff. And here’s the deal is they,
They’re a company that just cares about their people. And the content we bring in here, I do my best to be as wise as a snake and as innocent as dove.
and to bring a lot of wisdom into the context where we have companies that have people from all different kinds of faith persuasions that are part of that. And what we’re teaching here is part of the road collective. It’s not like, hey, you have to believe exactly what we believe. There’s not like a litmus test like to be developed. You have to believe exactly what I do about Jesus or about exactly what you do about Buddha or this is not a religious thing. What people least have to be comfortable with is this, is we’re going to try to develop the whole human.
Like there’s even a phrase in business called whole human health. That’s really what, if your company’s interested in developing the whole human that you employ, right? Then this might be something we need to talk about because we’re talking about developing the mind, body, spirit, the emotions, the wholeness of the person. Now what happens is when you have somebody that works for you, do you begin to invest in helping them develop as a whole human being?
Tell you what they do. They start to feel like they’re seen, known, affirmed, and blessed, which is what we’re talking about right now. And the results have been amazing. And people are saying, wow, this company really cares about who I am, not just what I do. And if that’s something your company would be interested in coming in, could be a half-day workshop, could be quarterly workshops, could be monthly coaching like we have with a handful of businesses. Reach out.
Reach out to me, you can email me, Daron at DaronEarlewine.com. You can get information at RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. I would love to get on a discovery call and talk about ways that we might build a partner and help develop your people to truly become who they were born to be. Okay? So let’s dive in. Let’s talk about the first foundation and it is this, to be seen.
If we’re love people, they need to be seen. I love this quote by Brene Brown. She says this, we cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known. When we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. From her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. And she hits.
the nail on the head there of the first two foundations we’re going to look at, right? When we cultivate, right? When we cultivate love, when we allow ourselves most vulnerably and our most powerful selves to be deeply seen and known. The first one here is to be seen. And the reason this is so important is to borrow a phrase from Henry David Thoreau, right? When he says that the mass of men and women lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed.
desperation. It doesn’t take very long to live life to notice that the majority of people are in a form of desperation. You know what they’re most desperate for? They’re most desperate to be loved. They’re most desperate to be loved because that’s what we were created for. We’re created for and by love. And when we don’t experience it, it begins to lead us into a life of quiet desperation. That’s not what we want. We’re afraid to build a foundation that can sustain the tests of life.
we have to build it on love. And that’s about us stepping into the place of being able to see other people. And as I said in the last episode, there’s two sides of this coin for every one of the foundations, or we might call it two lenses. And it’s that we have to actually be seen and to see. And that first starts with actually seeing ourself. Once again, Jesus speaks about this in a powerful way. When he says this, here’s what I want you guys to do. I want you to love your neighbor.
Right? Or love other people as you love yourself. In the first glance, that makes sense. Okay, well, the way I love myself, yeah, that would make sense. Like, you know, I would not treat people differently. I want to treat myself, know, I treat others how you want to be loved. mean, that we get that. okay, yeah. Love people like I love myself. That works until you have to answer this question. How well do I love myself?
Because what I’ve noticed in a lot of the coaching development that I’ve done, whether it’s in the church or in the marketplace or it’s in the bar or it’s on the radio, all the different environments have had a great opportunity to be a part of. What I notice is that the meanest person on earth to you is you.
Right? mean, when you really blow it, when you really screw up, the things that you say to yourself about yourself in your brain are some of the meanest things that anyone’s probably ever said to you. And you don’t think anything about it. You’re like, I’m just saying it to myself. Well, you are, but it means that when you see yourself, you reject yourself. means when you see yourself, you judge yourself. It means when you see yourself, you condemn yourself. this is, this is, I think what Jesus was getting to here is, listen, if you’re going to love others,
well, you have to come to the place where that you love yourself well, meaning you love yourself the way that God has loved you. So, if we’re going to actually love people and build this foundation, we have to take a minute and go, do I actually see myself as someone worthy of being loved?
And I pause here because as I’m saying that, the weight of that question just kind of started hitting me.
Like you might need to pause the podcast and go for a walk with your dog or something and think through this one. Like as I’m, have a desire to love other people, do I actually see myself as someone worthy of being loved?
And that takes an honesty, that takes a courage, that takes a vulnerability to really look at. And if the answer is no, then that’s where you actually need to start on building this foundation. Because it’s not until you begin to love yourself the way you’ve been loved by God that you’re going to be prepared to build a foundation to see other people and see them as worthy of being loved.
I love a lot of Brene Brown’s writing and in her Gifts of Imperfection, she talks about this massive study she did and to realize people that had a deep sense of belonging, I could understand and feel a peace and a love and those who really struggled for it. And here’s how she says it. I realized that only one thing separated the men and the women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seemed to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It’s as simple and as complicated as this. If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging. The greatest challenge for most of us is believing that we are worthy now, right this minute. I couldn’t agree more with what Brené says.
And the question is, you, when you see yourself, do you actually, if you are worthy of being loved right now? And a big part of what we’ve tried to journey in on this rogue way is uncovering, right? The noble quest that you’ve been, that you’ve been, have the opportunity to pursue.
Looking at these four core questions, the amazing gifts and abilities and how you were created on purpose and for purpose. And there’s so much value in you. We’ve unpacked the idea that first and foremost, when you see yourself, right, that you should see someone created in the image of God. And we unpacked what some of those realities were. But when you look at that and you go, okay, wait a second.
If I made it the image of God and He’s given me all these abilities and all these gifts and all these talents and He’s given me a purpose and He’s created me on purpose and for a purpose and He sees me and He knows me and He affirms me and He blesses me.
I think, I think that means that right now, based on who I am, because of who he’s created me to be, I’m worthy of love. Now, in nowhere in there did I say you’re perfect, you’re doing everything right, you’ve never done anything wrong, you never hurt anybody, you don’t need to ask for forgiveness. I didn’t say anything that’s based on your performance. It’s based on who you are and who you can be in him. And if we don’t start from that,
That is as a place of, I need to be able to vulnerably and affectionately know and like see myself and say, you know what? I see myself and I see someone that is worthy of love. We’ve got to start there if we’re ever going to step into this next step of seeing others. Quick call to action, think of something you could do here. Maybe grab a journal if you have one and just start writing down some things, some truths about yourself that…
make you worthy of being loved. And we could go down a pretty deep theological hole even further than we have to help you unpack some of that. But this is a great place to start, to write in those things now, because there might be something about, these are things that may be in your brain you mentally agree with, but the 12 inches, whatever, from your head to your heart, it hasn’t gone there yet. Like, yeah, I believe that mentally about myself, but you don’t feel that.
It’s not in your heart. And sometimes when you take things out of your head and you write them down in front of you and they become something that you’re that you’re observing with your eyes and then kind of pulling back into your heart, it begins to sink in a little bit deeper. So that might be something that that you could do in this process. OK, so if we get there and we’re starting to make some momentum there, now we’re on the next place where we say, you know what? Now I need to step into this idea of do I actually embrace the power of seeing others? I think about the idea of power.
I think about superpowers. I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with somebody of like, hey, if you could choose any superpower, which one would you choose? And there’s tons of options, excuse me, Tons of options in this one. You know what mean? What about Spider-Man? What if you could shoot spider webs and climb up walls and stuff? Pretty cool. I mean, some people would choose that. Maybe like the Flash. Maybe you want to be the fastest. You want to be able to run places super, super fast. I think there’d be some cool elements of that.
I don’t really get like Aquaman. Some people might be in with that, not my jam. Okay. For me, if I had to be honest, I think I would go with the ability to fly. If I had to choose one superpower, I would want to fly. I mean, it would just really simplify a lot of things in life. I would choose flying, but I’ve heard people say I’d choose to be invisible. I’d choose to be invisible. And like, I can see some of that.
I can understand how that could be maybe attractive, but honestly, when someone says like, think I would choose to be invisible to me, I get a little nervous around that person, right? Like, okay, why do you need to never be seen as your superpower, right? I mean, this seems a little shady to me, right? You robbing banks, what’s going on here? It makes me pause there for anybody who would really like.
to be invisible. If you’d like to be invisible and you think it’s a wonderful, noble thing, send me an email. I’d love to hear the rationale behind it. But here’s what I also think about is if you had the superpower to be invisible, although maybe you could get out of certain situations and there may be some positive, here’s what I would also know. Your relationships would be impossible. Like if you were truly invisible, I would go with this. Invisibility, I think, would be death. Right? And in fact, I would say…
It is in life. I can imagine doing your next week and doing everything you do and no one sees you. You’re just invisible.
As you sit and feel that for a minute, I want you to then bring that emotion.
And realize that that is what we have the potential to make people feel when we go through our life and choose to be selectively blind and not see people. I remember John Maxwell saying something one time many years ago that I thought was a little, you know, kind John Maxwell-y thing. But he said that to make a great influence, that leaders need to walk slowly through the crowd.
And I know I haven’t always done that.
What about you? Like when you walk through your life, are you walking slowly enough to really see the people around you and let them know they’re not invisible? Because when we see people, we actually are given the amazing opportunity to choose to love them. I don’t know if I’ve told you guys this story before, but last year, maybe two years ago, my wife was busy as all moms are, right? She was going to the gym, then she had to go do some stuff for work. And in between it, she was trying to run into Trader Joe’s and get some groceries and it’s bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. She’s got to keep moving. And she’s at the grocery store. Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees somebody that she knows, but she’s making a split second decision right here, right? And I know we’ve all done this. When you have a lot of stuff you get done, you don’t have enough time to do it. And then you see someone, it’s so easy to say, I’m going to pretend like I don’t see them.
Because what seeing them is going to do is cause an interruption into my life. I don’t know how long that’s gonna take, but what I can know is I don’t have time for her to take any of my time. And so in this split second, she has to decide, do I see this person or not? She glances over and she does, but something seems off. She works out with this woman and usually she’s bubbly. She’s just kind of one of those like beams of sunshine kind of people. But as she looks over and sees,
This young mom that she knows, she realizes something is not right. Now she has to go to even the next level of choosing to love. Okay, I now made the decision, I do see her and I can see that something’s not right. Now, if I go over there now, whatever my agenda was is completely blown, because this is gonna take a minute. And I’m so proud of my wife that she decided, you know what, this is the time I’m…
This is not a time. This is another time I’m going to choose to love. And she goes over and she says, Hey, are you okay?
And this young mom begins to get emotional and begins to unpack for Julie that I think it was within the past 48 hours her mother had passed away.
And, um…
My mom’s still alive, so I’ve never experienced what that pain is, but I can only imagine, and from folks that I’ve had to walk through that process with.
Can imagine how difficult it is, how isolating and lonely, vulnerable, scary it feels, and especially if it happens very suddenly, to be without a parent.
And Julie and this woman were able to talk and they’ve been able to build a friendship through the past year. And it’s really beautiful to see just the opportunities to love that have come from this. But what if my wife had decided to make that woman invisible?
And what happens when we’re doing it? Every day of our life. And I think what we struggle with is I think we struggle with what people have called selective blindness. It’s not that we can’t see, we can all see. We just selectively choose to be blind to certain kinds of people at certain times. And I think we do it. Maybe it’s purposeful. Maybe it just happens naturally. But I think we do it because if they’re invisible, right, we excuse ourselves from having to love them, which is…
Selfish, but we all do it. We’ve all been in the store or in the mall or whatever, and we see somebody like, I’m not gonna see them. Maybe you’ve been driving around a certain part of town and you’re like, oh, I’m not gonna keep my eyes on the road here. I don’t wanna see that person at the stoplight, holding up the sign. I’m not making eye contact. If I see them, they don’t exist. And I think too often, we talked about this a little bit.
As we went through the four noble quests about the noble quest of love is that I think too often in life, what we’re blind to is what Jesus might call and other people have called like the other. It’s just people that are different from me and make me uncomfortable. And that can be rooted in a lot of things. Like I think ignorance is a big thing that it’s rooted in, right? Ignorance then usually kind of seeps into fear. I feel ignorant that I’m kind of afraid here and then I don’t like that feeling. So what I do is I begin to stoke my pride, right? That I’m better than, then I get defensive, then I get selfish and maybe the end of it, I just become lazy or we might even just call it apathetic. All of these things factor in and I think what happens is it could be something as small as somebody that’s from a rival school. I don’t want to see them. We can’t stand them.
That they wear purple, wear a bob blue or whatever it is. But then it’s like, what about people from different countries? Right? What about people that are of a different nationality, different race? Do we purposely try not to see them so we don’t have to love them? Because to love them, to see them would have to challenge my ignorance, I’d have to get educated, then I would actually feel less prideful and more humble and then I wouldn’t have like…
Like I said, I don’t know that we sit around and plot this. don’t know. I don’t meet too many people that just want to be diabolically selfish, non-loving people. But I think if we look at our life, we see these things are happening, right? What if people from a different faith? Oh, well, they don’t know the truth. So trying to see them. Political parties, we’re doing wonderful with that in America. Right? How, if you look at your social media habits, like
Do you even see anybody that thinks anything different than your political party year ago? No, I don’t even follow any of them. I just cancel them all and I close it out and I don’t, I don’t even want to see it. I don’t even want to see it. Right? Cause it might challenge what I think it might challenge. might be my pride, my fear, defensiveness, my laziness, my selfishness. Oh no, I might actually have to love people that are different than me. Here’s another one I think is, is, uh, is a selective blindness for us is people from a different economic status, right? Well, if I see somebody that has less than me, I might actually have to do something about that and become generous. They’re blind, I can’t see them, right? I don’t want to see people that are doing better than me, because that makes me feel like I covet what they have and I feel envious. so I just, don’t… What are the things that are making you selectively blind in your life? And what opportunity are you missing? Are we missing to love? Things we got to dig through. I want you to think through that.
Maybe it’s time for some more journaling. If I had to be honest, which one of those hits for me? Is it a different country, different race, different politics, different economic status? Which one is the ones I’m saying, man, just, I don’t want to see them. And if you had to be honest, what’s fueling it? So you know what, I’m ignorant. just, I’m not, it’s not that you’re stupid. You’re a smart person. I just don’t have knowledge of that. So it makes me feel uncomfortable. And so I avoid it. Well, at least now you know how to fix it.
Okay? Which one is it? Ignorance, pride, fear, defensiveness, laziness, apathy, Or selfishness that’s causing them. One of the other things I want you to look at is I think this is a major issue in our society. I think we are struggling massively if we want to build a foundation of love in our life from what we’ll call technological blindness. Which means I think our current cultural obsession with technology, specifically with our smartphones and everything else going on with this,
is absolutely inhibiting to our ability to see others. And you see this all of the time. I see it in the airport. I think I told you guys before, when I teach the purpose paradigm in local schools, walking around during a passing period in a local high school, and every kid has their face buried in their phone and have headphones on. And I just realized, well, I know why you feel lonely and anxious and depressed, because you don’t see anyone. Your life is in your phone.
And so if you don’t see anyone, no one sees you. So no one has the opportunity to love you. Right? And what this is doing is it’s, as we talked about with the Jenga, it’s deconstructing the foundation of our life. And we’re seeing people come down with a great crash.
Psychology Today says this, when technology takes the place of in-person relationships, it has been found to increase loneliness and disconnection and reduce well-being. Our technological bias, or our technological blindness is destroying our foundation to be loved, right?
Another thing for psychology today and a combination of that and a website called Destination for Teens is this, the use of smartphones, social media platforms and other digital devices has become ingrained in our daily routines. While technology offers convenience and connectivity, excessive or misuse of technology can have adverse effects on mental health, including depression. The constant connectivity facilitated by our technology can blur the boundaries between work and personal life, leading to increased stress and anxiety.
Furthermore, the rebellions of social media can contribute to the feelings of inadequacy, comparison, isolation, all of which is associated with depression.
What would it look like? Here’s my challenge, my call to action to you. Okay, this is a good tough one. What would it look like if you, for the next week, deleted all social media off your phone? You can still check it on your laptop, you can still check it on your desktop if you have one, or you gotta check in, you can do so. But what if you took seven days and did a digital fast from social media? How many hours of your…
life would you get back this week that you could possibly see real human beings that are really actually in your life and have the opportunity to love them or be loved by them? Think it over, see what you think, okay? I want to close with this story, the story that I think gives us a biblical framework for what this looks like. And it comes down to the name,
Elroy. Elroy. Okay. The word is there are two words. E-L-R-O-I. Elroy. It’s a name for God that comes from the Pentateuch from the first five chapters or five books of the Bible. from Genesis 16. And the story is really interesting here. There’s an Egyptian servant woman named Hagar. And she’s working as a servant for a woman named Sarai. And
Sarah couldn’t have kids. And so she got a grand idea and she said, hey, Sarah, why don’t you be with my husband, Abram, and see if you can give him offspring because I can’t. And it worked. And it worked. But as the baby grew, so did Sarah’s resentment. And so she began to really make Hagar’s life real bad. And she…
demanded that Abram send her away. So he did. Sent her and her child into the desert, basically to die. As you dig through the story in Genesis 16, it’s interesting because God sends an angel to give Hagar some much needed encouragement, support, and he saves her life, speaks a blessing, an affirmation over her life and her line. And then she says something really interesting.
She says this, you are the God who sees me.
And then she says, have I truly seen the one who sees me? You are the God who sees me. And the Hebrew word there is Elroy, the God who sees me. Have I truly seen the one who sees me?
And this powerful moment I want to sink in for you is that God has been known by that name and many others, but ever since, He is the God who sees you. He is the God who loves you. He sees you in your best and your worst. He sees what you can become. can see what you’re being healed from. He sees you. And it’s the first foundation of His ability to love you. And then Him in…
inviting you to be like him in your relationships, that you are the one who sees people. Quick, another call to action. Okay? How about this? This week, maybe you do the digital fats. If not, just want to encourage you, just increase your commitment this week, right, to eye contact. Like when you’re talking to people, look them in the eye and maybe even try this, active listening.
Okay, when someone says something, repeat back what you heard them say and say, is that, hearing you correct? And stay present with them. Get your phone out of your hand and see them. Watch their body language. See what cues you can get, right? Try this with your spouse. Try this with your kids. Try this with people you work with. Try this with your buddies you play pickleball with, whatever it is. Try to stay connected and see them this week and see what happens, right? And maybe notice their reactions in them, okay?
Appreciate you tuning into this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast. We’ll be back next week as we take a look at the next foundation, is to be known. And to be able to talk again, remember, God’s far and not against you, He’s near and not far, and He’s created you on purpose and for a purpose. Thanks for watching or listening to this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast.