Recently, I was asked to teach in Stayer’s new Digital Entrepreneur Cheddar MBA program. I accepted the offer and then decided to enroll in it. Crazy, right? Why would an older woman with a BA, MA, and PhD want to do that? Why would she want to spend her time and money on something seemingly far afield from being an English professor? What could she possibly have to prove?
I decided to get my MBA because I am finally conquering my fears, by paying attention to what has held me back for years. I’m saying “Yes” to possibility—even if it’s scary and hard. How did I get to this “yes?” A big breakthrough in moving forward came when my daughter and I went to counseling to improve our communication. When I was telling my side of our relationship to the counselor, the counselor said to me, “Your stories do not serve you well.”
I was furious that the counselor dared to question my stories. My stories are my experience, and they frame how I live my life. They are uniquely mine! The counselor was not diminishing my stories; however, she was helping me understand that I was in counseling for the specific outcome of improving my communication with my daughter. Holding onto my stories would not achieve that outcome.
The counselor helped me understand that my daughter and I had our own stories—points of view—about our relationship, but that now, in this moment, the story that mattered most was getting beyond all of them. She asked us both to follow Dr. David Drake’s (2017) conception of analyzing stories carefully to “connect the neural dots” and get beyond what was holding us back:
As noted in the top arrow in Dr. Drake’s (2017) graphic, the internal stories that guide us come from an event or (experience) that we turn into a (story), which triggers our core values (identity) and impacts our (behavior), often about an unmet need that results in a negative (outcome) (Drake, 2017). These stories live inside us and stop us from moving forward.
Here’s an example: Even though I published writing at a young age, when I went to Columbia University to get my MA, I was told by a professor that my poetry writing was not good. The event triggered my growing fear that I didn’t write well and should stop writing. I internalized triggers that caused me to accept the poetry story as disapproval. I couldn’t get out of my own way, once triggered, and held myself back, over and over. I was not able to analyze my behavior to change the outcome.
However, the bottom arrow on the graphic is a cue to understand how to interpret a story differently, through reversing the analysis, or rewinding the story. Think about the poetry experience (outcome) as one person not liking the poems, then realize that the feedback could be seen positively (behavior), and understand this as a growth mindset opportunity (identity) to continue writing, by rewinding the (story) and moving forward (experience).
Our brains process our stories and hold us hostage to them in our memory, stopping us with fear and doubt before we even begin something new. Our job is to take the time to understand our stories frame-by-frame, rewind them to react to the cues that trigger negative outcomes, and look at the outcomes as a “let me move forward” opportunity (Drake, 2017). By rewinding our stories, may me all create new ones to move us forward. This is how we conquer what holds us back.
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