The steps of the four A’s are the visible structure, but the real engine of change is the emotional layer running underneath. Joe is explicit: you can do the steps rote and get a decent result, but the method becomes powerful only when you feel everything that comes up while doing each step.
“You can just do the stuff rote and it works pretty well. Works a lot better if you do the stuff and feel everything that comes up while you’re doing the stuff.”
This is because the pattern exists in the first place to avoid an emotional experience. Announcing surfaces the grief and fear of being seen as bad. Apologizing surfaces what was behind the shame holding the habit in place. Acting forces you to live through the feared fantasy of rejection or attack. Feeling all of it — grieving what needs grieving before and during each action — is what actually dissolves the pattern. If you do the steps while suppressing the feelings, it can go sideways.
Joe’s image is a milk carton labeled “the 4 A’s — easy!” until you flip it over and read the ingredient list: decades of unfelt shame, inadequacy, fear of rejection, pushed-away love, and grief. The method is simple but not easy.
“It’s simple, but it’s not easy. But the reality is this methodology makes all of that easier than doing it otherwise.”
The reassuring part: you’d have to feel all that emotion eventually to change anyway. Feeling it all at once while taking action is easier and more efficient than dragging it out across months of journaling.
Related Concepts
- The four A’s change behavior after you’ve seen a pattern: announce, apologize, ask, act
- Take five clean contrary actions immediately, as reps
- Fully feeling a pattern ends it without figuring anything out
- The four A’s only work after a genuine recognition, not from a should
- The golden algorithm: we invite back the emotion we avoid, in the way we avoid it