Attentiveness – Page 22

Anticipate Turbulence

Last week, our older son and I flew on an airplane. As we were about to take off, the pilot explained where on the trip we might experience turbulence and how to prepare ourselves.

This is an outstanding exercise for our personal and professional lives. Anticipating turbulence with loved ones, in counselling, and in spiritual direction can enable our artful response.

And yes, there is turbulence for which we cannot prepare. Knowing this, we can spend the time in silence, cultivating solitude and trust, so that we have the interior resources we need when a challenge arises.

Anticipating turbulence helps us respond instead of react when strain enters our lives.

Always a First Year Teacher

The experience of being a first-year teacher is uniquely disorienting.

I find myself suddenly responsible for children at an age of which I have limited experience. I must attend compassionately to who they are and what they need even as they are unable to communicate this to me directly. I must, balancing empathy and assertiveness, consistently create the world of the class. And I must maintain this sense of consistency even as I integrate constant improvements to serve the students better. And I must do this every day.

For parents, too, a similar dynamic is always at play. Since my oldest child is always getting older, I am always a parent of a child of an age of which I have little direct experience. (Today is the first day I have parented a child of 4.65 years, for example.)

It is right to acknowledge the challenge of this dynamic. When we do, we are able, also, to see the possibility. We get to meet our child anew every day.

You’re Right. I Suck.

(This is the first of the Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset, four mental stances that clip our potential, limit our intelligence, and stifle budding growth.)

When faced with a setback, a challenge, or a bit of critical feedback, we occasionally collapse into ourselves declaring: “You’re right. I suck.” We fixate on the negative so thoroughly, we are scarcely able to see anything else. We over-identify with the experience of failure.

This represents a subtle form of hiding. If I am fundamentally incapable of addressing the challenge with flexibility and insight, I am off the hook!

This mental stance distorts reality and side steps the wisdom on offer. Namely, it:

1) Over-identifies with the negative moment, hardening the (untrue) narrative that we are bad and incapable.

2) Blinds us from the positive buds of growth that already exist in the situation.

Let’s watch out for “you’re right, I suck.” Seeing and naming it drains it of its power.

You’re Wrong. I Rule.

(This is the second of the Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset, four mental stances that clip our potential, limit our intelligence, and stifle budding growth.)

In this mental stance, when faced with constructive feedback or a setback, we become defiant. (I don’t deserve this! You’re wrong, world! I rule!)

This Horseman takes the legs out from under our curiosity. We avoid the questions that could lead to our growth. For example: What could I learn from this generous gift of feedback? What is the whole, complex picture of why I experienced that specific failure? How might I improve?

When we say, “I’m right. I rule. Full stop,” we wimp out. We dodge the uncomfortable but healthy questions that the situation at hand poses to us.

Blame It on the Rain

(This is the third of the Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset, four mental stances that clip our potential, limit our intelligence, and stifle budding growth.)

Here, when confronted by challenge, we absolve ourselves of responsibility by externalizing blame onto things outside of our control. “It’s her fault! It’s his fault! It’s their fault!” Blame an easy target and pretend that we do not have agency in the system.

This mindset has the air of validity because much of the world is absolutely outside of our control. Rather than fixating on “the rain,” though, it is much more productive to see the bits of agency we do have, acknowledge our role in the system, and step forward toward growth.

Optimist without a Cause

(This is the fourth of the Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset, four mental stances that clip our potential, limit our intelligence, and stifle budding growth.)

Someone stuck in this mindset acknowledges, superficially, the difficulty of a given situation, and then imagines how it will resolve without having to engage in meaningful change.

This is a tricky one because the surface optimism masquerades as a mindset centered on growth.

But this positivity has no strategy, and is employed as protection from the urgency, complexity, and potential of the situation. This thin confidence functions to avoid growth, rather than confront the issue head on.

A positive attitude can certainly be an asset as we confront challenges, but it must be accompanied with a story and a strategy that moves us toward the growth of which we are capable. Avoidance leads us nowhere.

The Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset

The outstanding teacher residency program where I coached teachers some years ago immersed the residents in the need for “growth mindset.” Someone with a “growth mindset” believes that they can grow, that ability and intelligence can be developed. Because of this belief, a person engages challenges and helpful criticism with sincere effort on a path to mastery.

Its converse is “fixed mindset,” which believes that one’s traits are essentially fixed, and so effort is useless. This mindset avoids challenges and truthful critique. It feels threatened when others thrive.

Fixed mindset is everywhere, in all of us, and quite tricky to talk about. (No one wants to hear or acknowledge that they are stuck in such a narrative.) So, the teaching program’s leadership wittily and decisively seared this concept into the minds of the residents by naming the “Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset,” the four ways that this stunting mindset typically manifests.

They named the Four Horsemen as follows:

(1) You’re right. I suck.

(2) You’re wrong. I rule.

(3) Blame it on the rain.

(4) Optimist without a cause.

These conceptual hooks have been such a gift to me, that I wanted to share it with you. I’ll write the next week’s posts about each of these manifestations.

Until then, here are the master teachers themselves acting out the Four Horsemen in the video they used to train the rookie teachers. Enjoy… if you dare!

A Saint Goes to Psychotherapy

Did you know that St. Oscar Romero went to psychotherapy? He did!

As a young seminarian and priest, Romero’s prayer and discipleship was bound by his obsessive-compulsive personality disorder which manifested as a self-absorbing scrupulosity.

Here is a key bit from the book where I learned about all this, linking his therapeutic and his saintly journeys.

“[A] psychic / affective conversion within the particularities of [Romero’s] OCPD and scrupulosity revealed psychological complexes, which, once engaged, freed him from the rigidity of their hold, healing and transforming the complexes into a source of energy he never imagined or realized he had at his disposal.” (Pg. 154, Archbishop Oscar Romero: A Disciple Who Revealed the Glory of God, by D. Zynda)

Romero channeled this energy into becoming a superlative pastor and archbishop, and his commitment to God and the Salvadoran people flowered more fully each year.

Much is written and taught about Romero’s courage in the face of the violence that ultimately took his life. We should write and teach more about how an indispensable part of his capacity for such a witness was rooted in the courage to show up to psychotherapy.

Drop Your Tools

During the War in the Pacific, nearing the end of World War II, the Allies made many amphibious landings on Pacific Islands occupied by Japan.

The Allied leadership often did not realize, though, that many of these islands were protected by large reefs which prevented the landing boats from unloading the soldiers directly onto the beach. This meant that the soldiers had to suddenly exit the boat in deep water and swim to shore.

These soldiers carried heavy gear that they believed (and their training had drilled into them) was crucial to their survival, even their identity. But in this new scenario, plunged into deep water, the men who clung to their tools tragically drowned. It was those who could, in a split second, change strategy and shed their heavy tools, who lived to fight.

We have tools to help us navigate life: patterns of thought, routines, narratives, even our default personalities. Do we also have the attentiveness to know when it is prudent to drop these tools and engage the world in a different way?

You Have Been God’s Grace to Me

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead is a long letter that the speaker, John Ames, writes to his young son. I have thought repeatedly about many of the lines in the book, but none more than this one.

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle… If only I had the words to tell you.” (emphasis added)

The book is an arrestingly beautiful reminder that grace, the unearned and unbidden love of God, saves us from our silliness and self-sabotage. And this quote in particular functions to remind me to attend to this grace as a parent.

The ability to say to a child, “you have been God’s grace to me,” is one of the finest gifts a parent can receive. The care that then comes from this realization is one of the finest gifts we can give to a child.