A Five-Minute Attitude Adjustment

The other day, I met with a stranger on Zoom and did this exercise—Joe calls them “experiments”, so I will too, from now on here. We had both done Joe Hudson’s Art of Accomplishment Connection Course earlier in the year, and this woman had reached out on the site looking for someone with whom to redo the course with, one on one. It’s a bonus of the course that we have access to all the videos and exercises to use until, I guess, forever.

This one was the third or fourth experiment of the day. The first one was to look into each other’s eyes for a few minutes and to be conscious of staying in our own bodies in awe rather than judgement. The other ones you can learn if you take the course. But this one, this experiment, changed the tone of the day for me. It was like I was a toilet that finally got flushed. (Any excuse to talk about pee or poop...) I felt so clean when we were done.

Here’s what you do. Person A says “I feel____,and that’s okay.” Person B says, “You feel_____,and that’s okay. I’m not here to judge you.” Then person B says, “I feel____,and that’s okay.” Person A says, “You feel____,and that’s okay. I’m not here to judge you.” And back and forth for about five minutes.

Part of the experiment is to name your feelings: cheerful, pissy, scared, excited, guilty, amazed. You know: feelings. (If you are unsure, Google list of feelings and try some on.) You don’t name your thoughts about how you feel: I feel like I should clean the house. Use a word or two to name the feeling. If I’m Person B, and you just said to me, “I feel ashamed, and that’s okay,” my job is to be with you while you have the feeling, but not to lose myself in it. If it’s helpful, you can think of the person who feels the shame as being in their own emotional pool feeling shame. You can be next door in your pool which happens not to be full of shame, but you can still be with the other person as they soak in it. If you find yourself judging the other person, what Joe suggests is to sit with the idea that you are avoiding an uncomfortable emotion. You could ask yourself, What would I have to feel if I didn’t feel judgement? and then be with the other person’s emotions cleanly, not imposing your judgmental thoughts on them. I’m not here to judge you.

Saying I’m not here to judge you started to feel like freedom, like throwing open the windows of a dark house. It felt like that to say it, and if felt like that to hear the other person say it to me. If we aren’t here to judge our vulnerable selves or to judge others, then we can be more free to witness and love.

So much achingly morally dark things are going on in the world right now. The word unprecedented has been said more times since March of 2020 I think than, well, than I don’t know what. I feel like it used to be a rare word and now it’s over-used, or at least it feels that way to me. I flinch every time I hear it. All of this is to say, it’s nice to have a few moments in the day where it’s not about what I think is good or bad or right or wrong. It’s nice just to be with someone and pay attention with loose hands and a curious heart.