Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Stories We Tell Ourselves

Goldwin Smith Hall. 
Today in class we watched a video about Dr. Brené Brown who is a the professor of sociology at the University of Texas. She told us about a time when she went to Lake Travis with her family after she and her husband took all their vacation days off. They got into the lake since they had not been swimming together in twenty five years and she got about 500 yards in and she turned to her husband and told him how connected she felt to him and all he said was “Water is good!” And this continued on when they got to the end. 

Once her husband was about to get out of the water she called him over and said the most important thing she could have said. This was the thing that she said changed her marriage, her career, her life and the way that she did things. What she told her husband that she was making up a story in her head about how the scenario would go and he he is looking at her like she is either too old or can’t rock the swimsuit like she did years ago. Her husband said that he had a nightmare about the lake and he was trying to refrain from having a panic attack. 

At that moment she realized that the stories that one tells themselves are what put marriages in trouble. When we think about what we want in our lives, we want love and attention and we have to let ourselves be seen and be known by each other in order to be connected to one another.Our brain is neurologically hardwired in the instance something happens to make up a story when something happens. Our brain recognizes beginning middle and end and if we can give it a story it rewards us chemically, it rewards us whether the story is accurate or not. In research this is called a conspiracy. Conspiracy: limited data points filled in with values and ideals. 

What people do in that dark space is what separates leaders from non-leaders. When you are there and you're alone and in the dark; that is where leadership is forged and created. Experience only gives you a little bit of grace and whispers you’ve done this before. When something difficult happens the people who get back up and be braver after adversity they have a clear process in common. As leader you can choose courage or comfort but you cannot have both, and you don’t as a leader get to write the ending to a story that you don’t own. 

To make my room look less depressing. 
After class McKayla and I walked to JAM, which is another residence hall, to grab her computer before coming back to Balch to hang out in their lunge and do homework. It is actually so much better than working in our dorm rooms because the lounge is so much more colorful and we don't get distracted as much. The couches in the lounge we were in today were so comfortable we took a power naps before beginning on our essays about Amundsen and Scott from The Last Place on Earth and the different leadership tactics which led to the failure of Scott and success of Amundsen. 

I have been wanting to finish the majority of it before Friday so that I can do multiple revisions before I submit it. Also because we have a final reflection and some course evaluations to finish as well. So much is going on and it's all just finalizing everything since the program is coming to a close. At this point I'm just working to get the pile of homework I have to shrink. 

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