Environment Makes a Difference!

 A while back, I read “Trust” by Dr. Henry Cloud.  He writes repeatedly about how humans are hardwired to trust.  We are built to trust others and form relationships.  The book covers a lot of ground but one of the over-arching ideas is that when you spend time with someone, the natural by-product of that time is that you begin to trust them.

It does not matter much about the person’s actual conduct or character.  It also does not matter much how they treat you.  If you stick with them, you deepen your trust in them.  The books goes in depth about how this plays out in your daily life (it IS a worthwhile read), but I think we should also be very conscious of the inverse side of this equation…

The people who are spending time with you, most likely trust you.  Even if there is no conversation with a trust litmus test or any other form of a DTR (Define The Relationship), they probably trust you and more significantly- your opinions.  Our environment has a HUGE influence on our perceptions of ourselves.  You are someone else’s environment.  Are you being intentional about making sure that environment is good for the people around you? Are you affirming them?  Are you building them up and encouraging them?  Are you modeling a good attitude or being a Debbie Downer?

As an educator, I was blown away by how many of my students told me that their parents repeatedly called them stupid.  These students saw themselves as stupid, casually called others stupid, regularly called themselves stupid, and worse yet, they believed they were stupid. 

I was shocked by the reports that their parents called them stupid, because my mother would have NEVER called me stupid!!  Now that I’ve raised a few teenagers, I get it!  My teens did a LOT of really STUPID stuff.  I was constantly scratching my head asking, “how could they be this stupid?”  I knew they were smart.  I had seen them do smart things.  I had seen them use higher level critical thinking skills.  Still, they would make the dumbest mistakes. (Like real mistakes, not just being incapable of loading the dishwasher LOL, IYKYK.)

While I would hope I did fewer stupid things than my own kids, I have talked to enough parents by now to know- we ALL do stupid things when we are teenagers.  It is part of the process.  As an adult, I don’t remember half of them and in retrospect, I see myself as an incredibly smart teenager who had my life together.  Why? Primarily because I did not have someone calling me an idiot every day (regardless of whether or not it was warranted).  I had parents who celebrated my accomplishments and successes, and diminished and forgave my mistakes. 

My environment dictated my perception of myself. 

Proof that I did dumb things...
I committed trespassing just to take this pic (Age: 18)

I have also seen this play out in a less healthy way in my life.  I used to be overweight. Honestly, …I didn’t know that I was significantly overweight.  I told myself that I was big-boned, and that the scale and the few photos I couldn’t avoid were inaccurate depictions of my health. 

I had no clue that my physical health was a problem, because my environment assured me that it was not a problem.  I was surrounded by people who ate the same way I did.  People who loved me well, regardless of my pants size.  My husband treasured me as I was and made me feel beautiful.  I went in for annual check-ups and never once had a doctor point out that I was medically overweight and on a trajectory that would likely lead to serious medical problems in the future.  Everywhere I turned, my environment reinforced that everything was good.  I trusted my environment. 

Back to the context of my classroom, my 6^th period…
The majority of the students in this class struggled academically but were plenty sharp.  I was regularly caught off-guard by next-level, quick-witted jokes from the student that typically had the lowest grade in the class.  They asked which of my classes was the “smartest.”  I pushed the question to a discussion and articulated that I knew the gradebook was not an accurate measure of the intelligence of my 6^th period class.  I stated that I knew that the student at the bottom of the gradebook, was actually really smart; he either was not good at school or was choosing to not apply himself in my classroom.

The students in the class knew him well enough to know his grades, but none of them contested my statement.  They also knew him well enough to know about his sense of humor, his side hustles, and the other things in his life that demonstrated his capacity.  After this group discussion, that specific student started making an effort to learn in my classroom.  That was cool, but the biggest win was the day when he referred to himself as stupid and then immediately corrected his own self-talk, “well I’m not stupid, I’m just not good at this.”

My students knew I had a zero-tolerance policy for negative self-talk.  They also knew that the same standards applied for how they spoke to one another.  Why?  Because environment matters!!  I believed that that student was smart, I made it a point to call that out in him, and I changed his perception of himself.  Not because I’m special, not because I’m some superhero teacher, but because words are THAT powerful. 

YOUR

Words

Are

That

Powerful!

What we say and how we view the people around us makes a difference. 

Take some time to reflect:

• Where do you need to be intentional about creating a better environment for others? 
  
• Are you allowing your environment to normalize things that you know are toxic or unhealthy?
  
• Knowing that you are hardwired to trust, are there any steps that you need to take to strategically curate your environment?

Let me know if there is anything I can do to encourage you in that process or pray for you.  Let’s love one another well, and ourselves!