The Problem
You can't change what you can't see
Some familiar experiences:
- You know you're procrastinating on a task, but you can't see the feeling you're actually avoiding.
- Someone seems disappointed in you, and suddenly fixing their opinion of you feels urgent and necessary. You know you should let it go, but you can't.
- You keep making ambitious plans and mysteriously abandoning them at the same stage.
- You're certain someone is being unreasonable, but you're not noticing the assumptions you made that make them look that way.
- You've done years of self-work and can explain all your patterns, but you still keep doing them.
The problem underneath all of these is that you can't work on something while you're inside it. When a feeling, assumption, identity, or worldview is invisible to you, it doesn't feel like a feeling or an assumption — it just feels like reality.
The first move of psychological change is making it visible and editable. Psychologists have a name for that move.
The Idea
What is the subject-object move, and how is it the key to everything?
This term comes from Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan's adult development theory.
The mental move isn't exclusive to Kegan, though. You'll notice it in every inch of the therapy, healing, and personal development space. You've likely already met it under other names:
- Meditation taught you to notice a thought rather than be the thought.
- CBT taught you to examine a belief rather than assume it's true.
- IFS taught you to say "a part of me feels this" instead of "I am this."
- Somatic work taught you to find a feeling in your body and hold it as sensation.
Call it mindfulness. Call it metacognition. Call it awareness. Each is a variation on the same underlying move. Kegan just asked the biggest, broadest version of the question:
What else has you that you don't yet have?
You can think of it this way: while your anger is "subject," you're inside it. It has you — driving your reactions without ever presenting itself for inspection. So you react unconsciously: lashing out, shutting down, numbing, avoiding, etc.
When your anger becomes "object," your anger becomes something you have, separate from who you are innately. Now you can hold it, question it, experiment with it. You can learn about your anger and decide how you want to prepare for and channel it when it shows up. Before: anger was invisible, or else you could see it in yourself but it didn't feel changeable. After: anger is manageable. (Notice that it's not all-or-nothing — there are degrees of seeing, and every degree you gain is agency you didn't have before.)
This doesn't stop at emotions. There are layers upon layers that can be peeled back, revealing deeper and deeper opportunities to take control of your life. From your inner world to your productivity, your relationships, your decision-making, the way you find meaning and fulfillment.
Kegan's stages of adult development (explained on my site Book of Kegan) are basically a map of things that humans can become capable of doing the subject-object move on. While this course won't be focused on explaining the Kegan stages or "getting to a higher Kegan stage," it owes Kegan's theory for this fundamental groundwork.
The Move, In Action
The same move, at every layer
“She's judging me.”
“I'm having a strong reaction to the idea that she might be judging me.”
“I need to stop procrastinating.”
“Something about starting this feels threatening. What is it?”
“He's being selfish.”
“I have a model of what he should do here. Where did that model come from?”
“This is just what I want.”
“Why do I want this? What in me is generating that answer?”
Notice the progression: first your emotions become visible, then your social world, then the system doing the wanting and judging. This is the same path our four weeks will follow.
The Four Weeks
The modules
What we'll actually cover in this course.
Internal Experience Becomes Object
In week one, we'll practice the subject-object move on emotions, desires, and motivations — compassionately noticing them in real time instead of taking them as instructions. The hidden or repressed forces driving your psychology become visible, and with visibility comes a new option: deciding what happens next.
The Social World Becomes Object
In week two, we'll practice the subject-object move on other people's opinions of us, our culture and social contexts, and what relationships expect of us. You'll practice separating what someone thinks from what you've decided their opinion means about you. Hidden or repressed ideas about love and belonging become visible, and we'll discuss what a healthy relationship to self and other looks like.
My Own System Becomes Object
In week three, we'll turn the lens on the system doing the looking: your belief systems, personally-chosen values, and ideas about how life should work. The hidden or repressed forces that underlie your worldview, decision-making, and judgments of others become visible. We'll practice holding a strong point of view without confusing it with reality itself.
Deepening Into Your Growth Edge
In week four, you'll look back on the last three weeks, notice what carried the most signal for you, and go deeper there. We'll discuss advanced troubleshooting.
Why a Course
Understanding it takes five minutes. Making it a reflex takes practice.
You can understand the subject-object move by reading about it. (If the examples above landed, you've already made the move a few times!) But that's not what this course is for.
The hard part is remembering to make the move while you're inside the thing — while you're defensive, ashamed, certain, avoidant, people-pleasing, or spiraling. In those moments the pattern isn't an idea you know about. It's the lens you're looking through, and it does not announce itself.
So for four weeks, we'll practice catching it in ordinary life: a few minutes at a time, many times a day, with a cohort running the same experiments. The goal isn't to know about the move. It's to make it automatic.
Imagine catching yourself halfway into a worry spiral and suddenly seeing the false assumption underneath it. Or noticing, in the middle of an argument, that “they're being selfish” is a model your mind is generating and can easily let go of.
Format
How the course will work
Weekly video
An explanation of the weeks' subject-object moves: what they are, how to practice them, and what to do with what you find.
Weekly challenges
Instructions for practicing the week's moves — which you will apply immediately to your life, a few minutes at a time, many times per day.
Always-on WhatsApp community
Where you'll share how your challenges are going, pump each other up, plan side quests, ask questions.
Weekly Zoom Q&A (Wednesdays, 6-7pm Pacific)
A live space to connect with the cohort and troubleshoot anything confusing or stuck.
Four weeks: September 14 – October 12.
Pricing
Beta cohort pricing
$300 $250 until September 3rd
This is the first cohort, which means two things: you get the course at its lowest-ever price, and you get a say in what it becomes. I'm looking for a small group of curious people who'll actually run the experiments and tell me what's working. Future cohorts will likely be more polished but miss out on the exuberance of being part of the first cohort ever!
Claim a spot →
Your Guide
About me (Ann)
You might know me from my viral talk about interpersonal conflict or my obsession with the Kegan stages. I’ve mediated, coached, taught, and facilitated workshops about conflict independently and through various non-profits. I've organized groups and events featured in The New York Times. In a past life, I was a successful startup founder.
Some things people have said about me:
"Ann brings energy and warmth and inclusiveness to every conversation"
"Such profoundly on-point counsel"
"Has the clearest understanding and communication of how humans work that I've seen from anyone in a generation"
FAQ
Questions
Who should or should not take this course?
This course won't be appropriate if you're currently in a mental health crisis or active addiction. These issues require a lot more hands-on care and attunement than an online course can provide. Likewise, if you're struggling with physical sustenance or safety, this will need to be addressed before psychological exercises can provide much benefit and not accidentally create harm.
This course is perfect for someone who is doing generally okay but keeps running up against blocks in their life regarding things like productivity or people-pleasing. This course will be most beneficial to someone who expects to do the exercises and participate in the group chat and who has realistic expectations about how behavior change is built up slowly by creating new habits over time.
What will the weekly challenges be like?
The weekly challenges will involve checking in with yourself several times per day. Each check-in should just take a moment or two, but the power is in the habit. This might require setting an alarm, placing sticky notes around your house, or putting a note on your phone's lock screen to remind yourself to engage the week's mental move.
The actual mental moves will be like a reframe: notice X, and deliberately think Y. Depending on the week, this could have to do with emotions, relationships, your decision-making process, or something else.
How much change can I expect?
We'll address patterns in our lives (emotional! work-related! relational!) by starting with surface-level noticing (e.g. "I’m angry") and then working our way into deeper and deeper levels (e.g. "Oh huh, I guess I avoided situations like this because I had these competing values, but I see now that the previously-unconscious one driving my behavior was a false flag. I no longer feel blocked.").
I'm expecting that most people in the course will not reach the deepest levels in one go-around. Some people might use the whole four weeks just to notice their emotions. The more stuck the thing was, the more reps it may need to turn it from subject to object, but every inch of practice will make a difference. Because we're not working in a theoretical space - we're working in your ACTUAL LIFE. :)
What is the time investment?
The weekly video might run between 20 minutes and an hour. The optional weekly Q&A will be an hour long. Participation with the WhatsApp group and exercises might take a few minutes several times per day while the course is running. The more you engage with the course, the more opportunity it has to benefit your life!