(hey, hit the 2 sets of bullet points for the short version!)

In my book Scooch! I wrote about my experiment with the idea that it might be a friendly Universe. Starting so broadly (the whole Universe!) naturally took me to smaller-scale experiments in life about … anything.
 
So why experiments and what constitutes grand?
 
I’m pretty enamored of the idea that all of life and aspect of life is or can be an experiment. Looks to me like it’s closer to the truth (how much do we really know for sure?) and everything loosens up a bit and feels better if you know (admit?) you’re experimenting.
 
Since I’m no scientist, I think of experiments as playful and fun, not serious and scary. As a life coach, I encounter people’s fears and the self-generated pressure that we human beings typically put on others or on circumstances until we realize we’re in charge of whether we opt in for pressure or not. I’m in favor of setting things up and cultivating mindsets for maximum spaciousness and ease. Hence, experiments!
 
Here are some ways to think of experiments:

• Pressure’s off: you don’t know and you don’t need to know. (Beginner’s mind!)
• You just get to try stuff and course-correct as you go.
• You can’t get it wrong, so there’s nothing to judge. (You can certainly notice and work with judgments that arise.)
• You get out of habitual, stale stuff that’s your norm and try new things that could work better or take you to surprising places.
• No foregone conclusions: anything can happen, so you get out of outcomes and show up for the journey.
• With no expectations, you don’t set yourself up for disappointment; you can use any that does come up (use ANYTHING that comes up) to redirect the experiment!
• Best attendant mindsets include curiosity, awe, wonder; a playful sense of exploration.
• Presence is your best ally: show up, senses engaged to take in and respond to new information as it comes in.

Why a grand experiment? I do like to say, If you’re going to bother experimenting at all, make it a grand experiment.
 
The following could make a simple, humble experiment very grand indeed:

• Stay with it. Do something different for a while, because rushing back to what you already know and do is typical, not grand.
• Believe in and intend inspiration, epiphanies, new directions—transformation.
• Do the unexpected. Do what you think you can’t. Do what you’ve been saying you want to do.
• Open to surprises—and meet your responses to them so you don’t shut beautiful doors that are opening to you.
• Look again at first reactions and interpretations. Do some inquiry. Reframe.
• Follow your guidance system where you haven’t before, in minute and large things, responding to what tugs at you or flashes in. (Don’t talk back to the guidance! Do question your thoughts and fears if you notice back-talk.)
• Don’t teach yourself the wrong lessons. Don’t just quit when something doesn’t feel good or doesn’t go as you wanted it to go. Drop the language of “It’s not working.” It works now and now and now, as you try one more thing, get more present, pay attention. (Presence!)

 
(Need some support with questioning thoughts or reframing?)
(Need help choosing or holding your focus?)
(Need help following a path of least resistance and/or choosing ease and forcing nothing?)
(Need help reeling it all in when you’re discouraged or distressed?)
 
Have fun with your grand experiments.
Love & blessings, Jaya
 
P.S. Hey, now you know why I set up dating as a grand experiment. Get my free pdf to support your own grand experiment.

 Have you ever shown someone a startling blossom or alien bug and been disappointed by the way they say, Amazing, and then carry on? Like it was nothing? Like—what kind of amazement has no power to jolt them out of sleepwalking, even for a moment? Don’t do this to yourself. Drop a notch deeper into presence.
 
Once you think you’ve seen something, look again.
 
Try any of these tactics to drop down a notch, drop deeper into presence. What we’re after here is meeting the dynamic reality of this moment—not your concepts about it or all the prior decisions you’ve made, the stories you’ve rehearsed, the names and descriptors you’ve got down. (Red cardinal. Jenna when she’s moody. This much half-and-half.) These simple measures could literally take one more second—or whatever you like better in the moment.

• See and feel into its newness to you here and now
• See the colors in a more specific, more nuanced way (Every sky I’ve done this with has more colors in the mix than I first registered)
• Activate another sense beyond the default one (Don’t just smell the coffee; don’t just see the leaf)
• Take in its feeling essence, or what it makes you feel
• Take a consciously felt breath as you take it in, as if you’re letting it in more fully, while more connected to yourself (You’ll be doing just that)
• Even for a moment, be consciousness meeting consciousness (yes, with inanimate objects too—the building, the car, the stuck drawer)

 
Especially if you’ve had a thought about the being or thing perceived (and thus turned it into a concept of itself), look again as if for the first time. Apply this to the most familiar face (even in its most predictable presentation), the flower you walk by (yes—even if it did already spike appreciation), the cup steaming with the known hot beverage.

Now and now and now, just for now: just one notch deeper into presence.

Love & blessings, Jaya