Session Five Worksheet:
Waking the Sleepwalker
Objective:
Unlearn false truth indoctrination that breeds wrong conclusions.
Pivot toward evidence-based thinking.
Rethink It:
Move from Sleepwalking to Consciousness
Sleepwalking is often a natural reaction to a chaotic environment. With all that comes at us, changing from long-held beliefs to new ways of seeing requires us to shift in ways that are often unsettling. We are flooded with sugary, sensational information that does little to build our intellectual muscle. Most of us wouldn’t make a diet on Oreos, even though they are allegedly addictive as crack, because we know our bodies would be depraved of essential nutrients. Over time, if we binge on sugar and don’t keep up with the mental exercises of rethinking and unlearning, we can atrophy. The resulting brain rot keeps us from reaching new heights in our awareness. We need to find and use our reflective lens to see how we engage with false truths to avoid wrong conclusions and to pivot toward conscious thinking. When we avoid the childish telephone game of misinformation that is passed around writ large, we decrease our susceptibility to myth contagion. We have newfound alertness and clarity. We avoid the tremendous waste of sleepwalking through life.
Consciousness Check
Action Steps:
Clean Up Your Fluff
To wash off pesky fluff, we must come to understand that much of what we’ve learned lacks substance, or only comes from a narrow view. To find more protein, we need to be on the hunt for varied and credible sources. We need to get out of bed and try on some new shoes to get traction:
1. Cut the bootstraps. Don’t let pride trip you up. You don’t have to have absolute answers to tough life out. Ask yourself what you don’t know. Be fearless with your questions. Don’t worry about being right. Gather as much information as you can from as many credible sources as you can find.
2. Get your feet muddy. We don’t expand our thinking without getting lost first. As Harvard professor Frederick Mostelle first put it, we will inevitably have “muddy points” when we’re trying to learn. When things aren’t clear for us, we feel stuck. Staying clean within a muddy landscape is unrealistic. Don’t be afraid to get a little dirty as you trudge through
it all. Resist the urge to see things in neat, linear categories.
3. Throw on your flip-flops. Things are often not what they seem. Allow your positions to change. Embrace ambiguity and disruption. When we start paying attention, we see just how complicated life is, and how many lenses are available to us to try to understand the world. Don’t settle for one set way of seeing things. Look for deeper meaning that allows you to update your thinking and amass an amazing collection of lenses that will not only benefit you but be brought to scale for wider impact.
4. Take a trip somewhere else. Take a trip to the library and ask about how to find peer-reviewed sources. Visit Google Scholar to check out articles that are frequently cited, an indicator that the source isn’t just the latest pop psychology contagion. Chat with the librarian about which stacks and sites to visit to make sure you are working from solid literature.
Our brains are in a constant, weird, paradoxical state of overstimulation. On one hand we are gorged with information and yet we are simultaneously anorexic, hungry for substance, for something real.
We are starving for intellectual protein.
No matter how sticky and tempting fluff is, we must remain averse to it. We keep our hands clean of the superficial and stay on the hunt to feed not only our minds but our souls.
When we bury our pain, it only manifests in new and potentially more destructive ways than if we confronted it in the first place. Giving voice to struggle can be counterintuitive but is the birthplace of healing and resilience.