Question

1 is this person happy or unhappy with his life

2 is this a good day or a bad day

3 is the person looking forward to the day or wishing it were over

4 is this person married or unmarried

5 does he have any children

6 does he have a hobby and if so, what is it

7 does he take vacations, if so where does he like to go or what does he like to do

8 is he outgoing or shy

9 does he have few friends, a few close friends, or a lot of friends

10 if he has a job, what is it

11 is he a book reader and if so what types of books

12 what is his level of education

13 what are his likes and dislikes

14 now you add to this list as many other things as you can find in that face — a few examples:
is this person interested in current events
is he political and if so, where do his politics lie
what current movie would he like
what current TV shows does he like

Don't let the above questions throw you off. This is an exercise for the book (and one you can practice all day long with people sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street or in a supermarket). Your main work is to do this each day on yourself to see what your face is saying to both yourself and to others each day.

Don't Judge

Whatever the face communicates is simple fact. Whether you approve or disapprove of something does not change reality. Don't substitute judgment for the straightforward recognition of isness.

Question 2

Now put a feeling word or feeling phrase or several feeling words or phrases on the face in the mirror. What feeling(s) is (are) showing in that face?

Be careful not to judge, be careful not to let yourself deny a feeling because you don't approve of it. If the feeling is sadness and you don't think you should be sad, you have nothing to be sad about, don't skip that "sadness" evaluation just because you don't approve of it.

The same is true of the opposite. If you think you should be happy or pleased, don't read that emotion into the face because you think it should be there. Just be honest. It is, after all, a stranger's face and whatever emotion is there, it is there. It is simply a fact.

Try not to stop at one emotion and especially try not to get stuck with a single word day after day. As many people know, each day when we awaken we have a feeling tone for the day as a result of current experiences and/or as a result of our dreams. We seldom have a single feeling present at any given time. As you go more deeply into this book and as you practice you will find that it is rare at any given moment for there to be only one feeling. Even when, for example, pride is the main feeling for doing a task well; you will find that there are perhaps a half dozen other feelings that ride quietly along with the pride.

Further, don't try to match the emotion word(s) to the attitude word(s) from question 1. A person who seems open and friendly can also be angry. A person who enjoys life can also be depressed.

Treat the attitude question and the emotion question as two completely separate questions. Remember you are going to be doing this exercise each and every day so the more you can say each time the more you are growing in self-awareness; what you can see in your face and what others may be seeing in your face.

Question 3 (advanced)

Now we take the question 1 attitude(s) answer and the question 2 emotion(s) answer and we put them together. This is a more advanced technique and it takes longer to do properly than the first two questions. This is because if you are good at this exercise than you have more than one attitude and more than one emotion that you read in that stranger's face. The subtlety of this question is learning how to make combinations of the attitude and the emotions you see in that stranger's face.

Here is an example. Suppose you see the attitudes of boredom and stand offishness and you see the emotions of sadness and self-pity. So we have:

1. boredom and sadness

2. boredom and self-pity

3. stand offishness and sadness

4. stand offishness and self-pity

Now boredom and sadness don't seem to go naturally together. Why would someone be sad about being bored? But reverse those two and you get something interesting; instead of boredom and sadness it is sadness and boredom. Now that is a natural combination. If someone is sad most of the time it is easy to understand why he can be bored with that and life in general.

How about boredom and self-pity? Here either way will work.

That is one can be bored with their own constant self-pity. Or, reversing, one can pity himself because he is bored (with life).

But then with stand offishness and sadness, these do go together. Because someone is always rejecting others — the standoffish attitude — he can be sad at the loneliness of his situation. The same is true for stand offishness and self-pity.

Now we can try putting that all together. If someone is standoffish, he is alone, that loneliness leads to sadness, and then he can be bored with the sadness. (Besides, appearing bored further leads to being alone since that is not an inviting attitude, it does not tend to attract others.)

So that is the type of investigation that you can do.

way 1

You continue to treat the attitude(s) and feeling(s) as belonging to a stranger. Then you try to create a scene — much like writing a script or seeing a stage play or a movie — where all those attitudes and feelings occur together.

Some people tend to think in pictures and other people tend to think in words. Either way you can create a scene (picture thinking) or a script (word thinking) of the attitudes and feelings.

Depending on your ability and your time, you can treat way 2 as an alternate or an addition to way 1. That is, you can do only way 2 or only way 1 or both.

way 2

Here you take back your reading of attitude(s) and feeling(s) and put them on yourself. Now you want to ask either (1) when in my life when I was young did I have this set of attitudes and feelings together or (2) why am I responding to events in my life with this set of attitudes and feelings?

Way 2 can be harder or easier than way 1. It depends on the circumstances and your individual makeup. As you practice more and more of the exercises in this book you will get better at both ways and thus get more out of this daily exercise.

Note, again, that all this should be done without judgment. You are exploring; you are coming to understand yourself. If you insert judgement into the process (with approval or disapproval) you cut off the process and the benefits. Whatever is, is. It does not matter whether you approve or disapprove. It simply is.

Any time you find yourself thinking something like: Oh, I don't like that; then you have that judgement switch on and you need to turn it off. The only judgment you should make is the judgment that judgment is inappropriate.