THE FUN OF FINDING WHAT YOU HAVE IN COMMON
The Happy Subway Exercise
The other day, I was riding on the subway in New York City and saw a morose looking guy sitting opposite me. I was busy making all kinds of assumptions and judgments about this man, when I suddenly thought: “Hey, wait a minute! What am I doing? I know nothing about this guy or what kind of life he has had.” So then I changed my focus and began to think about all the things we had in common. And here’s the amazing thing: in less than half a minute, I felt happier! I smiled a little in reaction to my happier feeling, and then he smiled a little too.
It struck me that we are, each of us, faced with this kind of choice many times each day: shall I focus my mind on judgments or differences between myself (or my group) and others, or shall I focus my mind on what we have in common? Which one of these two choices we make has a big effect on our level of happiness.
A black person and a white person, for example, are genetically 99.99% identical. To put it another way, the genes involved with external differences in appearance, by which we divide races, amount to just one ten-thousandth of all our genetic material! So in this case, our choice is: shall I focus on the one ten thousandth of difference or shall I focus on the 99.99% of similarities?
The same 99.99% genetic similarity applies to people of different religion or even of different political party. Men and women are over 99% genetically identical — if that seems amazing, it shows how we get distracted by external things. Our judgments of differences - also called prejudice - is correlated with tension and unhappiness. Why? Because when we judge, we turn the other into an enemy or an alien, and then, automatically and unconsciously, we have to protect ourselves with tension against the enemy or alien we have created in our minds. Tension does not feel pleasant at all: pleasure and prejudice are inversely proportional.
Here’s an exercise you can do on the subway, or on a bus, or in any public space, or even at home. I’m calling it The Happy Subway Exercise (or the fun of finding what you have in common). You can get the audio version below (recommended, takes about 6 minutes) or else read the basic steps lower on this page.
If you don’t use the audio version, here are the basic steps:
The Happy Subway Exercise (or the fun of finding what you have in common)
Look at the person sitting opposite you. Don’t stare - you can look away and then look back after a while. Focus on how he/she is different from you. Make some mental judgments on this person — use the ones you usually use, or make some new ones. Allow yourself to really get into this silent judging for about a minute.
Note how you feel — on a happiness scale of 1 to 10, ten being happiest — when you make such silent judgments. Write down the number. This is your “differences score.”
Shift your focus deliberately onto what you have in common (most things). Remember that you are genetically almost identical and share all the same basic human attributes, like, for instance, caring for family, wishing to be appreciated, loving to laugh, enjoying good food, wishing for respect, wanting to be heard…
How do you feel — on the same happiness scale of 1 to 10 — when you experience your commonality? This is your “commonality score.”
Please let me know how this went. Did it work for you? How did your happiness score change? I’d like to put together some figures on this — does our happiness score increase when we change our focus from difference to commonality, and, if so, by how much? That would be good to know. You can tweet me, or add your two happiness scores to the comments section below. Please start with your score when focused on differences. For example, writing “4,7” or “4d 7c” would mean that 4 is your differences score and 7 is your commonality score.