What grades do we give one another in life?

It seems like a silly question, right?  I don’t often think in these terms.  Maybe we give ourselves and our loved ones A’s, our professional rivals and competitors C’s, and folks in opposing political parties F’s?

I wrote recently that I have gifted The Art of Possibility to multiple friends lately.  I just did it again this week.  One of you, dear readers, started reading it because of that post, and invited me to a self-development book club to discuss!  I am so honored and grateful, thank you!  This post is inspired by you and our ongoing Instagram conversation—thank you again!

I thought I had well and truly integrated this practice already.  As always, there is still room to learn and grow, and I just love how this continuing discovery emerges from sharing the book with people!

Giving the A is:
“an enlivening way of approaching people that promises to transform you as well as them.  It is a shift in attitude that makes it possible for you to speak freely about your own thoughts and feelings while, at the same time, you support others to be all they dream of being… An A can be given to anyone in any walk of life—to a waitress, to your employer, to your mother-in-law, to the members of the opposite team, and to other drivers in traffic.  When you give an A, you find yourself speaking to people not from a place of measuring how they stack up against your standards, but from a place of respect that gives them room to realize themselves.  Your eye is on the statue within the roughness of the uncut stone…  This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.” (paperback, page 26)

It’s a practice akin to making the most generous assumptions about people—a priori–that we are all here doing our best, that we are not out just for ourselves, that we want one another to do and be well.  And it’s also more than that.  It’s more active, takes more initiative on behalf of the other person.  Giving the A assumes not just that people are doing their best, but also that their best can be something great.  I think of it as approaching people as if the light of the world shines within all of us, and all we must do is uncover it for one another.  It is a way of being together that unlocks the greatest potential for us all to be our best.

New Friend and I compared encounters we had standing in line at a lunch place and checking out at the grocery store.  We shared how we caught ourselves feeling annoyed, defensive, and judgmental (not giving A’s to our respective strangers), and were able to shift our attitudes and put down our judgments and negative assumptions.

Something made me think about those assumptions—the default settings in which we walk mindlessly through life.  If I like you, admire you, and want you to like me, I will likely give you an A automatically.  I am primed to see everything you do as golden.  If I dislike you, then I’m likely to judge any behavior of yours negatively.  Whatever default I automatically set for you, confirmation bias reinforces that original grade I gave you, the label I assigned. So, is the ‘grade’ we give someone (or any given group) simply based on our existing relationship with them?  What if we have no relationship, as with strangers?  I think we grade people then based on heuristics—mental shortcuts that may include stereotypes, prejudices, and other biases.  Consider the risks here, and the harm this can do to us all.

I also think the grades we give can be fluid.  I messaged New Friend that they depend on “so many things–intersecting variables—our baseline relationship, its context, the circumstances of any given encounter, our mind state at the time… So mindfulness, as it so often does, comes back to me over and over as the practice on which to center myself. If I’m present in the moment, I’m more likely to notice what grade I’m giving the other person, and to myself as well.”

Aaah, the grade(s) I give myself–my default self-beliefs and -talk!  Off the top of my head:
As parent: B, maybe B+ overall… but in my high stress moments, C-… Or maybe it varies between certain aspects of parenting? I blame myself for many of the kids’ struggles–F! I have written that my greatest regrets in life are all relational; if I’m honest, they all occur in my closest relationships.  When I think of my ‘grade’, it’s a judgment.  And that is not the point of the practice.

The ‘grades’ we give, both to ourselves and others, are limbic, subconscious, automatic, and context driven.  But what do they really mean; how do they affect our relationships?  I think of them now as markers of possibility—ceilings of potential connection.  The letter ‘grade’ simply expresses concretely the abstract, insidious limitations we unconsciously put on one another’s potential as fellow humans.  It’s not that we go around actually assigning grades to people we know and meet.  ‘Giving the A’ is a mindfulness practice—an intentional way of being that honors maximal relational connection potential in and among all people, ourselves included.  So, when I think of myself as parent, giving myself an A does not mean I think I’m perfect or infallible.  It is not meant as a judgment of performance.  It means I give myself the grace to continually attend, assess, adjust, and show up by best; it holds loving space for my aspirational self to emerge and blossom, without pressure, obligation, or requirement.  I feel physical relief just realizing this distinction. 
Where do you need to give yourself an A?

Why practice Giving the A?  I do it to live in peace with myself and other humans–to see us as we all wish to be seen–with kindness, compassion, acceptance, and love.

When I give myself the A, I show up to you differently, and I’m more willing to give you the A. My energy is light, open, welcoming, inviting, accepting, validating, encouraging, and connecting.  When you feel that from me (and it is a feeling–intuitive, subconscious, non-rational), it affects how you show up to me, also.  It is both subtle and profound, incidental and transformative.  Our interaction and dynamic goes a certain way, any one of myriad possibilities, depending on what we each bring in the moment.  And it can change in a heartbeat–hard left, deep dive, instant bond or severance–if we’re not paying attention.  Maybe the hard times and disconnect happen more when we’re mindless, and the loving, connecting times when we are mindful?  Or maybe it’s just that we see the potholes coming and can navigate around them more easily in the latter.

Imagine if we saw one another as loving works in progress, every one of us, no matter what our circumstances, past experiences, and fears?   What if we held mutual possibility for all of us to step into our own full potential in any domain?  That’s a world I’d like to inhabit, and practicing Giving the A makes it a lot more likely.