The Stories That Keep Us Guarded

Insights and Activities from October's Joyful Connection Masterclass

October's Joyful Connection Masterclass opened on celebrations: a new home in a new province, a finished graduate program, an art reception honoring a grandmother, a gym 4 blocks away. More than half a dozen people were attending for the first time. The host and panelists, all men this month, had nicknamed themselves The Düdles.

Most of what keeps us guarded with a stranger is not what happened to us. It is what we carry about it: the polished version we present, the story we keep telling, the thing we have not yet let go.

This session asked the room to put those down.

Across 3 activities, people imagined lives they had not lived, separated a hard thing from the story told about it, and named what they were ready to release. Each one went a little deeper than the last. Here is a closer look at the activities that shaped the experience.

Serving Up The Düdles Noodles with Ryan G

Using a memorable meal to find the connection underneath it

Ryan G, a lifelong play by play broadcaster and self described believer in happiness who hosted this masterclass, opened with an ice melter he called The Düdles Noodles. The prompt was simple: what is your most memorable food experience?

He borrowed his framing from TV chef Jet Tila, who has said that food is ultimately about connection, and that a dish succeeds when someone says it reminds them of home. Ryan admitted, cheerfully, that he went looking for a quote to fit the activity.

He modeled it with raw oysters bought from a stranger's bucket on a beach in Venezuela around Christmas. He spoke no Spanish, had never eaten an oyster and does not usually accept food from strangers. The real story was a kid from Montana spending Christmas in another country with someone he loved.

Small groups traded their own, and the stories came back as exploding eggs, a steak shared with an old friend and a tip about an oyster from Maine said to beat all others. A meal is rarely just a meal, and the connection usually arrives with the story behind it.

How to Practice It:

• Ask for a memorable food experience instead of an introduction, since meals carry the people, places and reasons they mattered
• Model a story where the food is the setting and the person you shared it with is the point
• Listen for overlap, since shared food stories surface common ground faster than shared job titles

Courageously Connecting with Gregory Benedikt

Taking off the polished mask by imagining who else you could be

Panelist Gregory Russell Benedikt, an ICF certified coach and top 1% TEDx speaker who helps corporate high performers pursue the dreams they keep putting off, built his activity on a 100 day rejection challenge around San Diego. He went looking for strangers to turn him down and found the opposite: a yes to cannonballing into a stranger's pool, a TEDx talk now past 700,000 views and the woman he got engaged to 2 months ago.

His activity, Courageous Connection, invites people to drop the polished mask most of us wear with someone new. The prompt is one of his favorite questions: if you could live 3 different lives and anything was possible, what would they be, and why?

Gregory went first. Race Car Driver Gregory chases 150 miles per hour on a track. Yogi Greg meditates in a Himalayan cave, radiating love, and professional surfer G Money rides the world's best waves without the 300 people he shares the water with at home.

Jared Karol modeled it with him: Travel Writer Jared with nothing but a backpack, Out of the Chaos Jared free of daily worry, and Vinyl DJ Jared spinning records he picked up abroad that same night. Gregory reflected back that music and travel clearly mattered to him, which is the whole move. A set of 3 imagined lives reveals what a person values more honestly than a résumé could.

One participant noticed later that every alternate life still pointed back to the path they were already on. They took it as quiet confirmation that they were doing the work they were meant to do.

How to Practice It:

• Ask someone for 3 lives they would try if anything were possible, since imagination reaches places a direct question cannot
• Reflect back the value you hear underneath the answers rather than the answers themselves
• Notice whether the imagined lives lead away from your current path or circle back toward it

Removing the Second Arrow with Jared Karol

Separating a hard thing from the story we tell about it

Panelist Jared Karol, cofounder of Three Arrows Coaching, where he helps people in transition find clarity for their next chapter, is also a vinyl DJ who blends records and facilitation into something he calls vinyl healing. His first record, at about 8 or 9, was Quiet Riot's Metal Health.

He framed healing as a mindset rather than a destination, built on the Buddhist image of 2 arrows. The first arrow is the hardship itself, unavoidable for anyone human. The second is the story we tell in resistance to it, which makes the hard thing harder, and that one is optional.

Jared modeled it with his own life. At 14, visiting San Francisco, his father told him he was gay, and in the stigma of the late 1980s Jared told no one for almost 6 years, certain his friends would mock him or leave. When he finally told his best friend at 20, she shrugged it off as no big deal at all.

Andy Swindler modeled it with something smaller: cabinets left open and jars left unscrewed at home, which he blamed on his wife and stepdaughter. Then both of them went to Paris and the cabinets kept opening, so Andy concluded the house has ghosts. The point landed through the laugh, because the second arrow is usually a story we never thought to check.

Asked about his company's name, Jared later revealed the third arrow. It is the ripple our inner work sends out to everyone we meet, from family and colleagues to the barista and the driver in the next lane.

How to Practice It:

• Separate the hard thing that happened from the story you told yourself about it
• Ask what later showed you the story was unnecessary, since that moment is where the relief lives
• Let the listener simply witness while the other person names both arrows, without fixing anything

Letting Go and Letting In with Andy Swindler

Making room for something new by releasing what is stuck

Panelist Andy Swindler, cofounder and Chief Empathy Officer of CoGo, is a restorative justice trained facilitator who builds spaces where people share their truth. Asked for the strangest thing about him, he named his iguana, Phaedrus, who is 27 years old.

His activity starts in the body rather than the head. Sit with eyes closed for 30 seconds, notice where something is held, then say it in 3 lines: I feel, I'm letting go, I'm letting in. Let it settle for another 20 seconds, humming lightly if that feels natural.

Andy modeled it by letting go of FeelReal, the startup that hosted hundreds of dialogue circles during a period of profound isolation, and of the people he feared he had let down. Earlier that week he had sent the community a final email and received loving replies. He was letting in CoGo, a voice AI for 2 that helps couples deepen connection and repair, which he is building with his wife, Rachel.

Gregory Benedikt modeled it with him and named a tension in his body, the hypervigilance of always needing to do more. He was letting in love and peace and, he realized as he sat there, a little more of the Yogi Greg he had imagined earlier in the session.

Andy closed with a practice he and Rachel share, writing something on paper and burning it, a ritual that was part of their engagement story. Healing, he said, is best done in community.

How to Practice It:

• Begin in the body, noticing where something is held before trying to explain it
• Name it in 3 short lines: what you feel, what you are letting go and what you are letting in
• Give it 20 quiet seconds afterward, since the settling matters as much as the naming

Thank You

Thank you to Gregory Benedikt, Jared Karol and Andy Swindler for designing and leading these activities, to Ryan G for hosting, and to CoGo for partnering with the Connection Crew by Covve on this session. Thank you also to every first timer who went deeper than a video call usually allows.

More than one person said the activities built on each other, and some admitted they would have expected them to feel too risky until they did not. The session made a simple case: connection gets easier when we stop carrying what was never ours to carry.

We look forward to continuing this work and helping more people feel genuinely connected, one conversation at a time.