Session Two

Changing Directions

Objective:
Unlearn me-myself-and-I indoctrination that breeds insecurity.

Pivot toward do-it-together living.

The way you live your days is the
way you live your life.

—Annie Dillard

“I
t’s kinda not really about you. It’s more than that.”

Clearly, this wasn’t one of my most eloquent teaching moments, but I was trying to deliver the truth as plainly as possible. My nerves were a little frayed after a trying conversation with one of my students, and it was all I could muster up.

Usually, things go smoother with my graduate students. You should see them on the first night of class. Straight out of the gate, they hit the ground running, eager to start overachieving.

To break the ice, some guy asks whether I know where the professor is. Where he is, to be precise. It’s me. She. The room gets noticeably quiet. He blushes. Apologies fly. Well, you just made first impressions a little easier on the rest of us, no? Have a seat, please.

That wasn’t what flustered me. It would take time for me to unravel. We were off to a good start overall. Besides the where’s-the-professor guy, everyone else put their best foot forward. They were in classic thirsty-for-points-mode, fighting to hold their “Will work for A” signs highest.

Grad students are their own breed. They come early, stay late, and make sport of answering questions. And on the first night, there’s always a full-fledged make-the-best-impression competition that unfolds before my very eyes. It’s slightly entertaining, but mostly concerning.

One student thought our opening introductions, intended to be simple bios and proverbial hellos, offered the right moment to test out his very own elevator pitch. Even what was supposed to be a little blurb in the online group board revealed he had revised his anthology over seventy times. Can’t wait to see his papers. He’s gonna be one that takes constructive criticism really well.

Unsurprisingly, he turned out to be the ultimate humble bragger, minus the humble. In every class, he peppered us with details from his resume like we were a panel of judges during his audition for CEO of the universe. His classmates rolled their eyes but still took the bait, chirping back with their own five-star comebacks.

Why are you trying to make Ryan Seacrest seem lazy, Mother Teresa selfish, and Bill Nye the Science Guy look stupid? Enough already. Nobody cares about all the companies you’ve started or the trophies you’ve amassed. We know you’re smart. That’s why you’re here. We like you already. But the incessant self-patting isn’t pretty. Just stop. Nobody’s that friggin’ perfect. Except Beyoncé, but we can’t all be a boss like that. Your inflated ego is just a decoy. Let’s work to repair this together, please.

As the weeks unfold, behaviors intensify. The students egg each other on, upping the ante at every turn. Grades and money do this to us. The moment that either factors into a situation, people start going a little cray-cray. You know this already if you’ve ever tried to divide a dinner bill with a group. There’s always that person who eats and drinks like it’s their last day on earth, then goes on to suggest the even split to “make it easier.” Yeah, those four mai tais you guzzled made life sooo much easier on all of us. Really?

After many attempts to bring the collective anxiety down, we seemed to be making some progress. This was until one of my 4.0 diehards called me from her hospital bed. She was riding her bike; the driver was texting, disaster struck. As she relayed the sequence, I found myself side-eyeing the phone. Why me? You’d think she would’ve called her priest, sister, life coach, significant other—or even her cute little dog first. I think at that point, she had all her professors on speed dial.

Her biggest worry after her near brush with death was that it’d jeopardize all the points she’d chocked up. I tried to assure her that arrangements could be made, since she’d officially cleared the bar the syllabus set for “extenuating circumstance” and “emergency situation.”

Despite my pinky swear she wouldn’t be penalized, she signed herself out of the hospital, going both AMA and APA—Against Medical Advice and Against Professor’s Advice. She even arrived early as usual to class, this time concussed, black-eyed, and limping toward her holy grail. I scanned the classroom for hidden cameras. Is this a What Would You Do spoof? Why bother listening to mere doctors when there’s an A to earn?

You’d think she would’ve been glad to be breathing. She was miffed when I suggested she was getting carried away. Last I’d checked, being run over by a car constituted at least a few hours in bed. Beyond the shock of the condition in which she showed up, I was worried about the underlying insecurities behind her behavior. I was starting to feel more like a weird mix of Survivor meets Wheel of Fortune game-show host, not graduate professor.

She wasn’t the only one. Many of my students had been on the losing side of the game throughout their educational careers. They’d felt the painful sting of being voted off the island. The drill-and-kill academic treadmill had left them mentally drained and emotionally bankrupt. To them, it was redemption time.

Find a New Point

As I worked with my students, I worried that, despite good intentions, they were missing the whole point. Learning can help us become conscious citizens who connect to live out an impact-driven life—one that moves beyond me-myself-and-I indoctrination. It helps us get to what positive psychologists define as the good life—one marked by wholeness, well-being, and deeper levels of satisfaction than the typical superficial “good life” that’s equated with making money and chalking up letters after our names. Hence, my “kinda not really about you” remark at the beginning of the session. I admit I needed to find a better way to put this. My mind swirled with questions:

The gravity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. I knew we’d have to get to the root of the behavior to understand how it could be changed for the better. If my experience had taught me anything, it’s that unless you get to the underlying reasons behind behavior, you end up going in circles, with no real improvement. We need to find the point of what we’re even after.

Move Beyond Wit and Grit

When school, the place that’s supposed to help us flourish, becomes a source of dread and despair, you know something is wrong. Ideally, education should teach us how to be positive, contributing members of society. Instead, schools cheer students on to individual achievement and looking good rather than doing good.

This is why educational expert Howard Gardner, the father of the theory of multiple intelligences, advocates that we move “beyond wit and grit.” He and his colleagues at Harvard’s Project Zero’s Good Project want everyone to know that when we emphasize “goodness” in students—qualities that spur on engaged citizenry—it leads to positive social impact. This isn’t just touchy-feely stuff: they’ve found over decades of research that excellence, engagement, and ethics are the keys to helping learners become good citizens, those who contribute to the overall well-being of society.

Know the Science and Roots
Behind the Good Life

Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life worth living. The late Christopher Peterson, University of Michigan professor, one of the founders of the discipline, explains that psychological science and practice call us to rethink our typical ways of framing life. It calls us to zoom in on strengths and demonstrate interest in building the best things in life, rather than focusing on weakness or pursuits that bring fleeting pleasure.

Because positive psychology is a science, it requires checking theories against evidence, and should not be confused with untested self-help or affirmations that make us feel good. He emphasizes that the good life is genuine—it doesn’t deny there are problems. Decades of research are now demonstrating that despite the street fight that life can be, there is hope. The science reveals that

Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology explains that rather than simplifying human well-being as “happiness,” that “eudaimonia” or “human flourishing” can be fostered through habits that bring us to the highest human good.

Eudaimonia translates as “good spirit,” originating from Aristotelian ethics emphasizing being virtuous and loved, and having good friends. Daimons were seen as guardian spirits that point us toward a positive and divine state of humanity. Scholars like Paul Woodruff and Luc Ferry call the good life a “rational and practical humanism with an appreciation of transcendence.” Gary Chapman from the University of Texas calls it “living the change you want.” He emphasizes the good life is not antitechnological or antispiritual but allows for those who hope for a better world to find a shared vision for it; one that is flexible enough for “innumerable individual circumstances, but comprehensive enough to unite people in optimism, and deliberate progressive social change.”

Unfortunately, this type of conscious citizenry gets drowned out in the face of school climates that push for individual and institutional advancement. That we overemphasize personal success, rather than working for the greater good, may be one of the saddest realities of modern-day society.

Luckily, not all my students were humble bragging, breaking out of their hospital beds, or salivating for letters after their names. They had found ways to break away from me-myself-and-I indoctrination, the kind that teaches us to be hyperindividualized and self-absorbed. Yes, they were goal driven and hungry to accomplish, but their interest in doing so was for deeper reasons. While they cared about excellence, they were less obsessed with performance than they were with bringing impact. As Vanessa, an aspiring CEO, put it:

I hate the “he who dies with the most toys” mind-set of today. I think we’re missing the point when we selfishly focus on ourselves and we don’t see our true responsibility to one another. I’m not saying it’s easy for me—sometimes I can barely keep my own head above water. But when I catch myself putting my “what” over my “why,” then I know I’m going in the wrong direction.

Ben, a first-generation student, explained how he could shift his thinking from what to why:

My family never looked out for me, so I’ve had to do a lot on my own since I was a kid. They worked against me, not for me—they are the most critical and narcissistic people I know. I’ve always had a huge chip on my shoulder because of it. I had to grow up fast, and was bitter for a long time. I eventually started to rethink my situation and realized that maybe everything happened so I could be more motivated to help people who’ve gone through the same kind of stuff. I used to be so embarrassed and held on to a lot of rage. But with the help of a lot of people, I’ve worked hard to let go and take the good that came out of it. I realized it wasn’t all about me and the pain, and there was a bigger world to influence. I think what helped me the most was seeing that even negative experiences can turn into positive energy.

This type of rethinking exerted by many of my students was multifaceted. It wasn’t that there wasn’t, or hadn’t been, plenty of drama unfolding in their lives. More often, the students who demonstrated the most concern for bringing impact were the ones who had experienced a powerful combination of deep pain, along with the intervention of someone helping them find their way through it.

With this help, and even in the face of chaos, the students took the energy that was generated through their struggles and used it as forward momentum. The lessons learned anchored them in a deep desire to give back. Even when ongoing setbacks happened, they could see them as chances to learn something that would eventually drive progress. It wasn’t that they gave up their own personal interests, but such pursuits were no longer the center of their existence. Along the way, they increased their ability to be more self-compassionate, which translated into greater empathy toward their fellow human beings.

The momentum was so powerful; I started to call their behaviors “upward spirals.” It became an official research code that would eventually fill notebooks with remarkable patterns. My students were harnessing the energy generated from even tough circumstances to pivot toward a positive direction. Documenting their journeys was powerful, leading me into my own process of spiraling to make sense of what I was learning and unlearning right along with them.

At first I started to think that social psychologist Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy was the bull’s-eye explanation for what they were revealing. He asserts that our beliefs in our abilities to reach goals dictate behavior. Basically, if we believe we can reach a goal, we are more likely to set it and reach it. This is called a “sense of agency” or “self-efficacy.” It seemed like he’d nailed a commonsense way of explaining the determination, grit, and resulting practices of my students.

It also seemed like the rock-story theory of our time. Emotional intelligence (EI), popularized by Daniel Goleman, was another bull’s-eye. Most people in leadership, business, and behavioral science fields can recite the short list of skills EI teaches: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

We were talking a lot about EI in class, but it just wasn’t sitting right, especially with my international students and those who identified themselves as globally conscious. Many of my students saw what a lot of critics have also questioned about the theory: that it’s too me-focused and doesn’t resonate across cultures, especially those that are collectivist.

My introverts didn’t love it either. They squirmed since they thought that they’d have to manufacture a whole lot of charisma to compete with their extravert counterparts. We worried together that EI had the potential to teach us to hide emotions or use them to manipulate people, instead of being genuine.

My students weren’t only interested in their own ability to set and reach goals, or to present themselves better. They were more focused on how greater self-awareness would translate into their being able to bring clear impact. Time after time, my students told me that their shift from “me” to “we” enabled them to upgrade their sense of self-efficacy to get to the good life.

Like any solid research method, this led to more questions, some answers, and again, more questions. Eventually, my theory of mentalligence was emerging, starting with a concept I began calling “collective efficacy.” My students didn’t think that all the emotional intelligence, or success in the world, would make them happy if they weren’t applying it to make a difference. As Dawn put it:

“I wouldn’t dream of doing all this work if I thought it was just about me. I think too many times we are encouraged to be jealous, and all about ourselves. I’m happiest when I see people succeed. I hate to see suffering, and if I can do anything about it, I do. I think that’s what we’re here for.”

While Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy helps us set and reach goals, and Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence helps us develop needed skills, we knew we needed to take it further. Collective efficacy helped us fill in another corner of the human behavior puzzle. It helped us take our thinking to the next level, to translate purposeful goals into actual impact.

Move from Me to We

Collective efficacy embodies social and emotional consciousness. Inherently, it recognizes that an injury to one is an injury to all. It allows us to see that human struggle negatively affects all of us—not just those directly on the receiving end. It boils down to the idea that we do well when we all do well. When you hurt, I hurt, and when you are on top of the world, then just call me Karen Carpenter, too.

Collective Efficacy

Academic Definition

A belief system that holds advancement of the human condition, through conscious solidarity, empathy, curiosity, and unconditional regard for one another, as its primary objective. It espouses confidence in human potential and works to leverage it through a deliberate process of ethical reciprocity—a moral code that spurs us to treat one other well.

Street Definition

When you believe that the only way out of this big mess is to get out of your own head and become obsessed with making a difference. It’s about loving your neighbor, even when they don’t look like or agree with you. If you have privilege, don’t be a prick about it. Use it for good. Work together. It’s all we have time for. #onlywe #impact

Collective efficacy emphasizes mutuality, solidarity, and pluralism as avenues for human progress. It rejects insularity, bias, and centric behaviors. It widens the lens of “success” often propagated in individualistic frameworks. It views progress as transcending beyond an individual or specific group outcome. Collective efficacy can help translate me into we, working to get everyone to the good life. Collective efficacy relies on keeping an open mind instead of wasting time hating on everyone. It helps us avoid othering people and to see through the BS of social constructions that teach us to focus on ourselves to the point we don’t realize our potential for impact.

This way of living shouldn’t be that difficult, given that these teachings are embedded across every moral and religious code out there. There’s no shortage of “ethics of reciprocity” rules—ones that nudge us to think about how something would feel to us—to regulate our own behavior. Most of us can recite the Golden Rule on cue. Or, if you’re creative like Confucius, you call it a silver rule: do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. Gold or silver, these teachings all generate momentum toward empathy, a cornerstone of collective efficacy.

Know the Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy

It’s easy to confuse empathy and sympathy—since they sound and seem so alike. Most commonly, sympathy is defined as involving feeling a sense of sadness or pity for someone going through hard times. Empathy is explained as the ability to put oneself in the shoes of someone else. Empathy requires shared perspective or emotions that serve as a pathway to compassion. It often calls us to suspend our own positions of privilege to every extent possible to imagine someone’s plight and point of view.

Collective efficacy also helps us pivot away from thinking traps and blind spots that keep us hungry for validation and embroiled in an unhealthy level of competition with ourselves, and each other. It helps us balk at individual perfection for the sake of success, or crushing our opponents, and instead adopt an approach focused on the greater good that prioritizes making life better for all.

My students told me time and time again that their way out of the downward spiraling associated with me-myself-and-I thinking started when they began to reject modern notions of self and success that teach us to step on anyone who gets in our way, or to gorge ourselves with the earth’s treasures without stopping to give a care whether people are barely surviving. It didn’t feel right in their guts, and they knew there was a better way.

An interesting plot twist to collective efficacy started to unfold. I and we didn’t have to be an either/or proposition; it was both/and. When we advance ourselves, we become better equipped to advance one another, and vice versa. You don’t have to go completely me, myself, and I to end up happy. Tremendous energy comes from both processes. Reciprocity was in full force.

Ethics of Reciprocity

Academic Definition

Reciprocity involves a cooperative exchange of privileges with the implication of mutual benefit. It allows us to see ourselves in a state of relationship with all living beings, not that our actions and influence are entirely independent of one another. Ethics are moral principles that govern behavior, based on virtues.

Street Definition

You look out for people. When you have something beneficial, you don’t hoard it, and you expect the same courtesy to be returned. Be generous. Do the right thing. What goes around comes around. Be the domino that tips positive reactions. #goldenrule #karma

Ethics of reciprocity rules are principles for treating people according to how you’d want to be treated. These principles are found across many moral frameworks and religious and cultural traditions. An ethics of reciprocity helps us become more willing to give and receive in abundance. It gives empathy traction. Because you get what it feels like to have bad done to you, you don’t do it to someone else.

For my students, the less me-focused they became, the better they could enjoy the fruits of their hard work. They didn’t have to give up their dreams and goals to be forces for good. They also didn’t have to have picture-perfect stories. Sometimes, chaos fueled them with the most potent energy that catapulted them in a positive direction.

The upward spirals I was observing across my students were so novel and impressive, I launched an institutional review board (IRB) application, the permission needed to conduct human research. Too many important discoveries were unfolding to keep them a secret.

Spiral Up

This whole upward spiral–collective efficacy thing had me at hello. Grounded theory research helps yield what researchers like to call thick data, which allows us to get well beyond what seems obvious at the surface, to understand behavior. Unlike quantitative research, it’s less about crunching numbers and more about painting a picture of behavioral nuances, otherwise known as human phenomena—or why people do certain stuff.

This type of research is rich, in that it provides a path to explore underlying reasons behind our actions. The paradoxes at hand were a researcher’s dream. My students wrestled with their definitions of themselves and how to bring impact. They wanted it to be organic, but it was often awkward and bumpy. To be agile, moving along the upward spiral path, there was no time for rigid, me thinking. They needed to resist the trappings of their egos, keep open minds, and remember that reciprocity would lead to the good life—the whole point of what they valued most.

After coding all the data—which means chunking it into broad themes—and then sorting it into more discrete categories, four clear patterns of thinking emerged behind their processes of upward spiraling that would serve as a springboard for my ongoing inquiry:

Research Codes That Explain Thinking That Contributes Toward Upward Spiraling

1. We all feel wobbly. To be human is to experience weeble moments—those inevitable times when doubt and unsteadiness rent all the space in our heads. We can feel entirely grounded one second, and the next, a total mess. This is far more universal than we can imagine. We can help each other through this. My students became less “judgy” and less apt to “other” someone else when they acknowledged the paradox of human vulnerability and strength. Once my students owned their uncertainty, they gained traction toward their upward spirals, becoming better equipped to help both themselves and their fellow human beings.

2. Hiding doesn’t serve us well. The biggest lie we’re sold is that we’re the only ones who struggle. Success isn’t about having a perfect path. There is no such thing. When we hide truths, we resort to maladaptive ways of coping with them. And it sure doesn’t help the person next to us, with the same types of questions and doubts. My students showed that coming out of hiding was the turning point in their progress toward building the mental agility needed to break out of their downward spiral tendencies. Being honest and open accelerates collective efficacy, allowing us to act to further human progress, together in community.

3. Integration is key. While it’s tempting to present our neatly airbrushed, sanitized version, every human being has messes underneath the surface. When we integrate the bright and dark sides of our stories, we become more open minded and agile. Integration helps us embrace a multiple-lens way of seeing the world that fuses the best of what we know from science, culture, art, and spiritual realms. My students recognized that tying this together was the best way to help them stay curious, creative, and engaged in their relationships and roles. They felt less fragmented and more whole when they strived for greater integration. Showing up as the real you is vital to avoid a slow and painful soul death, or to help resurrect one that has already been snuffed out.

4. It’s about us. For far too long, across history and cultures, paradigms have existed that interfere with human progress and potential, teaching dominance over and othering instead of unconditional positive regard and benevolence. When people are oppressed for any reason—whether because of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ability, religion, or otherwise—it’s damaging to all. Schools and societies oust people according to alleged differences and deficits rather than similarities and strengths. Building collective efficacy can help us advance the human condition through empathy, solidarity, and pluralism. Even with systemic large-scale issues to contend with, our own effort toward this can go a long way. Human progress is always possible—and more likely when we abandon antiquated paradigms that harm us all, and instead maintain genuine and consistent regard for one another.

Breaking free from the bonds of me-myself-and-I thinking and moving toward reciprocity and collective efficacy take effort. But as my students demonstrated, it is truly freeing when you recognize that moving from me to we helps bring us all to a place of tangible impact.

When I arrived at this part of my research process, I couldn’t help but reflect on the tragedy of my humble bragger. After graduating, he applied for a job at my institution. When my boss checked his references, it turned out his long list of accolades were big, fat lies. Total fabrications. Not a word was true. The sad part was that he’d wasted so much time protecting his own interests when he could’ve harnessed his talents to make a real difference.

It’s kinda not really about you, after all.

Connection is our way out of the self-protection anthem of our me-myself-and-I world. Ironically, the scrambling, competing, and clawing to find our way gets us quite lost. We salivate at the idea that we can hack our fears by isolating or
running away from them. Hiding almost never turns out to be
the behavior that sets us toward individual or collective progress. The way forward is to pay it forward.