This Framing Needs A' Naming
What happens to your mind when there isn’t a word to describe an authentic experience?
Language developed as a direct reflection of both internal and external experience. A way to communicate, relate to one another, expand emerging ideas. There are few, if any, situations that don’t have a corresponding name. The everyday value of this convention is obvious. But value in higher order ways - to help you make sense of difficulty and discover the meaning that propels you forward - is what we’re writing about here today.
Language Shouldn’t Limit, But Expand
A trend of positive thinking in education is to try to avoid the use of certain negative words. This has great intentions, namely to avoid labeling individual people as potential failures or deficient in some way. And this is good, to the extent that it helps students better self-determine and not let these labels define their destiny.
It makes sense then that this positive intention has expanded to avoid naming experiences negatively as well. It might become too easy for labels for people to emerge from names of experiences - so you set out to eliminate the words altogether. But it is also here that a concern emerges: because negative experience is real, it is authentic, and in many ways, it is necessary to develop as a human.
So what happens when you experience that struggle, but you have no words to describe it? You get disabled.
The disabling comes from removing the tools that help you frame a negative experience in a positive way. In this case, the tools we’re talking about are words themselves. No choice that is difficult or delays gratification is possible without language to enable it, to validate our choice of the more difficult path.
For example, in order to make the decision to avoid sugary treats, we first have to acknowledge that sugar makes you unhealthy and overweight. Then, we can ascertain that a diet limiting sugar leads to positive health. Similarly, struggling against boredom and distraction to find focus creates joy, productivity, and motivation.
It is this last one that has us most concerned.
The Struggle is, As it Turns Out, Real (and Good!)
Not using the word struggle in relation to focus means the authentic experience of that struggle gets denied. The experience doesn’t cease to exist. It remains and feels like struggle. Instead, it sits there, unresolved, disabling students' ability to accept it, reframe it, and develop a corresponding positive narrative about why it happens and what it does.
Put simply, not calling it a struggle reinforces one’s inability to focus. It just leaves us hanging. And this is unfortunate because there is a world of personal satisfaction waiting in this naming.
So let’s start a campaign to call an experience what it is, beginning in education. Struggle, errors, mistakes, failures. Let’s give students the language they need to start understanding negative experiences as positive opportunities.
Let’s give them the language to be better than their biology, and the skills to participate in future progress.
And speaking of struggle… we thought we would try to visualize our ideas to better share with you how facing the struggle of focus is the only way to truly achieve flow. We have created a new set of infographics to help explain the different approaches to focus. You can also download them to share!
We’d love for you to click here to share what you’re thinking in our Twitter Community, as well as connect with other optimalists. 🐠
And Exciting Update On Our Product Direction
We’re celebrating the strides we’ve made since announcing the limited release of Focusable back in April. So, we thought we’d take a moment to acknowledge what we’ve built so far, what we’ve learned, and how working together with the Optimalist community has led to the big changes ahead. We invite you to read about this journey, including the exciting changes for Back to School.
The Optima List
the best possible list of opportunities
🤝 Thanks, Focusable Beta Testers!
This spring we’ve been testing our new product, Focusable, with a wonderful group of educators from the Optimalist community - and even some of their students! We have learned a lot from the experience of working with all of you, and we are excited to continue building this summer in preparation for the new school year. Curious and want to be on the waitlist for the next testing period? Just enter your email here!
🎉 The Focusable Team Will Be At ISTE!
Visit Sara, Arlen, and special community guest, Don Sturm at the Focusable tower in booth #2142. They would love to show you what we’ve been building, talk with you about our philosophy that everyone is focusable, and send you home with some mindset intervention gear. Come say hello! If you won’t be there in person, click the banner below to make sure you’re following the action on Twitter!
📚 Optimalist Book Study - Part 2
Thank you to everyone who has participated in the first Optimalist Book Study where we read and discussed Peak Mind over the last couple of months. Now, we’re excited to continue to the next stage of learning with the announcement of Book Study #2! Next month, we’ll be reading Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Registration open to all, and includes a copy of the book. You can find more information and register here.
🐦 Follow us on Twitter
We are a small team of product and community managers who would love to connect with you and start learning together. Are you ready to join our school of fish? 🐠
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"Struggle, errors, mistakes, failures. Let’s give students the language they need to start understanding negative experiences as positive opportunities." Stealing this and making a classroom/teacher workroom poster.