Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #9 Microdose on Being Effective: How Practicing Acceptance Can Help You Be Skillful When The Environment is Too Powerful

Transcript

#9 Microdose on Being Effective: How Practicing Acceptance Can Help You Be Skillful When The Environment is Too Powerful · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

[00:00:00] In episode four, we spoke about factors that interfere with us being interpersonally effective. And the last factor we want to discuss with you is when the environment gets in the way of us reaching our goals in social situations. You know, sometimes we can be the most, Interpersonally effective as possible.And environmental factors such as people or something about the situation might preclude us from getting our needs met, keeping other people liking us or behaving in a way that we respect. Let's say we sit down and we behaviorally rehearse the ways that we want to approach our roommates to get them to allow our partner to sleep over in our dorm and they still say no.Should we shoot her murderous looks for the rest of the semester or be overly persistent about the request? Or I don't know, just say screw her and have your partner over anyway. Insisting on our rights in this situation may produce really negative living consequences in the long [00:01:00] term. Or let's say that we desperately want to get into a specific fraternity or sorority and despite rushing in the fall in the spring, we're not successful.People simply may have a number of reasons for not liking us. And unfortunately how they feel about us becomes an obstacle to getting what we want. Now you'll hear from a college student who shares her story about the environment being too powerful and getting in the way of her being successful during the semester with her interactions with a professor.Was there ever a time where the environment was too powerful at college? Maybe there was like an imbalance in the relationship or it was an authority figure, you know, a hard time asserting your needs. Yes, I, uh, my gosh, there was an anatomy and physiology class that I had and It was like, I don't know why I even chose this professor because he literally wrote his notes on a chalkboard and chalkboards still exist.Yeah. I mean, [00:02:00] I was like, I purposely actually chosen because the prior class or the last A and P one. From the semester before she had notes on a slide and everything on PowerPoints. And I was like, Oh, this is not going to force me to write down notes and remember stuff. So then I chose him. So he literally had my grade in his hand and he determined how I was going to learn because every single thing, every note you had to write right after he wrote it on the chalkboard.So I thought that doing, putting myself in a position like that, or in a situation like that would force me to write it down. It actually put me in like a nightmare where I was like, I am like stuck here and I'm not going to learn anything. And I messed up because now I'm coming late to class. Um, so basically these, you know, feelings of negative feelings towards myself and feeling like I'm not worthy of the class or I'm not worthy of like whatever I'm going to learn here.Cause I know already I'm not going to do well. Like [00:03:00] I already filled the first test. Like what makes me think I'm going to do better anymore in this class. So it's kind of like, these feelings of like the rejection or the feelings of failure, um, as a perfectionist, even myself was kind of like, it really put me in a dark place.And I think it transpired to myself outside of school. I felt like I, like this one course that I'm failing, I'm like, I'm literally stupid. Like, this is literally, Like I'm not going to do anything better in school or in class or like outside. And then like, even talking to this professor, like building up a rapport with him wasn't the greatest either, because I, I know that he knows and I'm failing his course and he knows that I'm coming late to class.Like obviously he thinks I, I don't care about it. I don't care about what we're learning and he must think I'm stupid. Like, Oh, that was such a bad time. And I, and I know I put myself in that situation, but I was like, I didn't think it would transpire or like develop into this [00:04:00] huge problem. You, it's such a good example that I think teaching styles of certain professors and their grading style, their, their willingness to to even establish a good rapport with a student is so variable and unpredictable that that's such a good example of the environment being too powerful.You can't really like problem solve. You can make a request, but professors have a lot of power. They can just choose. I've been teaching this class this way for 20 years. I'm not going to change, right? Hence the chalkboard. Um, and You kind of have to do the best you can in that situation, but I can clearly see how the environment being so powerful led to you having a lot of shame and self judgment about your inability to adapt to the environment.And it led to a negative outcome academically. When you've tried every solution to solving your problem, we're left with a couple of options. We could focus on how unfair things are and this will likely result in more [00:05:00] frustration, anger, jealousy, and misery. Or we can practice acceptance and focus on being effective in the situation.So how do we practice effectiveness? The first step is to notice that you aren't being effective. Look out for your judgmental thinking. Do you notice you're thinking this is unfair? Someone should act a certain way. You should be getting what you want. Do you see signs of ineffectiveness in your body?Are you tense? Are your fists clenched? Your eyebrows furrowed? Although your disappointment or frustration is justified, focusing on environmental obstacles that are blocking you from reaching your goal is only going to refuel your emotions and possibly lead to you acting in an impulsive way socially.Now, practicing acceptance is not easy. A lot of us believe it means we're giving in or we're giving up or that we agree with the situation or person. I hope when you leave this micro episode today, you see that accepting a situation is often the most powerful and effective choice. So the first step in practicing being effective is [00:06:00] to accept that we don't have control over the situation, despite how frustrating that is.Acceptance is about being fully aware of our experience as it actually is and letting go of our attachment to what we want it to be. Once we acknowledge reality as it is, rather than staying in denial or being angry, we're in a better position to explore other options to cope with the situation. Maybe this means letting go of anger or resentment or accepting or playing by the rules in the situation.College students are faced with an incredible amount of freedom and they are still bound by rules and expectations that they might not always agree with. So think back to the past few years and how global pandemic has influenced you on campus. So many factors were not within your control and you could either focus on how unfair things were or practice acceptance and focus on things that were within your control.Your emotional reaction to things is one factor that is within your control. You can either focus on your frustration, your loss, your [00:07:00] pain, or you can acknowledge it and turn your mind towards acceptance. There are some things we can do to strengthen our ability to be effective and practice acceptance.The first step is to notice the content of your thoughts or your speech, scan your mind for judgmental thoughts. Are you dwelling on the situation? Are you complaining? Are you whining? Are you blaming or judging? If so, turn your mind towards acceptance. Say I've been focusing on the negative and now I'm going to turn my mind towards the present.The second step is to notice if your facial expression or body posture is communicating non acceptance. You know, many experts say that along with your thoughts and your approach to your emotions, that your expression influences how you feel. And we know that there's something called the facial feedback hypothesis, which is that our faces make a direct impact on our emotions.And there are things that we can do to Regulate our emotions and projects more acceptance by examining [00:08:00] what our face and our body posture looks like. In an earlier episode, I spoke to you about something called a half smile, which essentially is adopting a more peaceful expression by ever so slightly raising your lips.Um, and focusing on releasing tension in your forehead and your jaw. And we know that by practicing a half smile, focusing on releasing tension in your forehead and jaw, that you can ease those feelings of resentment or frustration that really fuel non acceptance. We also know demonstrating willing hands when we are frustrated and not accepting reality.We probably have our fists clenched almost like, um, a two year old frustrated at the grocery store because they didn't get a candy bar. Um, we can practice something called willing hands. Can we turn our palms out? Can we unclench our fingers and can we relax them? The last step is to act willingly. This means in terms of our behavior, true [00:09:00] acceptance means acting in a willing way.This means going with the flow and being an active participant in reality as it is. This means letting go of your urge to point out that something is unfair, even if it is. The overused saying, it is what it is, really rings true here. Sometimes in life, you have to toss your hands up to the universe and stop trying to control things.Acceptance makes painful circumstances more tolerable. When you can tolerate difficult circumstances, you can turn your mind towards the present and remind yourself that change is the only constant. Acceptance is a really important tool to adopt when you're in social situations at college where the environment, the situation and authority figure has more control over you.We hope now that you leave this episode with some tools to handle situations where people sometimes are the big obstacles to getting what you want while you're at school. We [00:10:00] want to hear from you. What are some things you're having a difficult time practicing acceptance in college? You can email us at collegesfindpodcasts at gmail.com or call into our hotline at 929 500 2231.