What I Learned In Class Today
I’ve delivered so many resiliency sessions since early September that I am starting to fall into that singsong rhythm that happens you’ve repeated the same messages, the same stories too many times in a short period. One goal for my holiday season is to reset my enthusiasm for the basics content and see if I can think of new examples and stories to tell. Freshen myself up a bit. But when you repeat a word, a phrase or a story over and over and over again, it starts to sound different in your head. Recently, my attention has been repeatedly caught by part of the Circles of Control exercise.
When I started teaching people about the Circles metaphor, the material focused predominantly on thoughts, feelings, actions, decisions. What you truly, categorically own and is within your circle of control is how you feel, the decisions you make, the actions you take. All true but as the years go by, participants helped me surface two additional categories of things that are within our circle of control: skills and identity.
Let’s take skills first as it’s the easy one. If we learn a thing, it’s ours forever. The company can spend money to send us to a SharePoint class or hire a leadership coach or foster our mastery of project planning. But what the company can’t do is take those skills from us when we leave. There is no “hand me back that Excel training” option. So take advantage of every opportunity presented to you to learn new things. Be a proactive, life-long learner. Every time you acquire a new skill, master a new concept, become a better Something, you increase the tools within your circle of control to adapt to what the future brings.
Tricksier to explain is the concept of identity. This surfaced during classes where people expressed a really strong sense of connection to a religion, a foundational belief system, a cultural connection. Whether it is church or iwi, community group or hobby, we choose the balance within our own identity and the extent to which we want to express it. Now it’s important to be careful here. Take, for example, the LGBTQ+ community. I would never argue one has a choice whether or not to be non-binary or homosexual. Similarly, you can’t just choose to be a Korean and >poof< you are a KPop idol. We’re born with many of these aspects of who were are. Yet, I do think we have some agency in how much we choose to invest ourselves into these cultural, racial, and biological attributes. We can make them central to how we express ourselves, spend a great deal of our discretionary time and effort in celebrating and affirming that part of ourselves. Or the single attribute can be just one of many that we let percolate in the back of our being but don’t spend a great deal of time with or energy on. For example, you might choose to primarily identify as an American mother of three from Devonport but that doesn’t mean you have to be a Karen.
Now key here is that you do not control how the world perceives you or – sadly – how they treat you. Racists are gonna be racist. Haters gonna hate. Pigs gonna pig. BUT, you can choose to take delight in yourself. You can celebrate your Japanese-ness or your Catholic-ness. You can revel in your theatre geekihood or your gamer nerdiness. No one can ever take away your pleasure in yourself unless you give them that power. And while the internet has brought us many assholes, it has also made it easier to find other people who will celebrate us exactly how we are.
It’s a powerful idea… at least for me. I find it comforting. As long as I can find a path to own myself, like myself, enjoy myself, no one can take that from me. It’s in my circle of control. They can and will say mean things. They can and will systemically try to disenfranchise or disempower me, but I can and will protect my ability to love myself.
This is starting to sound like KPop song, but… don’t knock it people. There’s a lot of meat in ‘boy band’ lyrics. If I hadn’t chosen to be a life-long learner and information omnivore, who knows when I would have stumbled on this most simple expression of empowerment: Love yourself, speak yourself.
“I finally realised
So I love me
not so perfect
but so beautiful
I’m the one
I should love.”
~ 방시혁 (Bang Si Hyuk), Epiphany, BTS, sung by 진 (Jin)
