LEARNING TO FEEL IT: A TRUE WAY TO TEACH

For years I’ve taught football. But what I’ve really been teaching — and learning — is how to feel.

It’s happened to me hundreds of times: a student shows up wanting to master a dribble, a pass, or a shot. I demonstrate the technique, but the real breakthrough comes when we manage to get them to feel the ball as an extension of their own body — when the movement stops being mechanical and becomes living expression. In that moment, football ceases to be just a sport and turns into a way of being in the world.

That’s when I discovered something that goes far beyond the pitch: to teach someone to feel something, I first have to feel it myself with full intensity. And to feel it more deeply — with greater color, volume, dimension — there is no other path than plunging completely into the experience.

The value we draw from any experience is directly proportional to the commitment we put into it. If we don’t give, we create no space to receive. It works like a perfect exchange: we receive in exact proportion to the value we offer others.

This creates a virtuous circle that allows no shortcuts:

• We learn to the same degree that we teach.

• We teach to the same degree that we learn.

• And we can only teach what we already feel vividly.

How could I teach someone to control the ball softly if I’ve never felt it glide under my sole like a caress? How could I transmit calm under pressure if I’ve never inhabited that calm in the midst of a match’s chaos?

To truly feel something, you have to be it.

And to learn to be it, you have to give yourself permission to be it now, in this very instant. Not tomorrow, not when you feel “ready.” Today.

When we manage to embody within ourselves — even if only in an incipient way — that which we long to become, something magical happens: we automatically begin to teach that state to others. Not with words, but with presence.

In short: we teach by being the example.

This has been the most powerful lesson football has given me, and now I want to share it beyond the ball itself. Because all of us, in some area of our lives, are learning and teaching at the same time.

I invite you today to choose just one thing you want to feel more intensely (a movement, an emotion, a way of relating) and give yourself permission to be it while you practice it. You’ll see how, almost without realizing it, you’ll start teaching it to those around you.

What are you learning to feel in this moment of your life?