by Charles Barnard
Steve was not really much different than far too many other middle schoolers. He was awkward and was constantly clowning around. He didn’t have many friends but took solace in the laughs he could generate from his peers. He didn’t realize they were laughing at him not with him. It didn’t matter; they were laughing. He simply didn’t fit in with this affluent country-club school population. He lived in the only trailer park on the very edge of the town and one that would soon be bought out by developers. He wasn’t a very good student. He didn’t know how to be a good student. By the time Steve joined our class he had six years of negative experiences associated with school, learning, and peer relationships. We had our work cut out for us.
First, he had a whole lot of limiting decisions we were going to have to begin reframing. Second, he had no positive habits associated with learning, studying, organizing, or socializing. He covered up his negative experiences in school by becoming the class clown and getting laughs. We could use that to our advantage. Positive emotions, especially laughter, can be a positive ally in transforming one’s mindset.
The first order of business was building a relationship and trust. That is not always easy especially if there is a long history of broken trust, which many of the students did have. Adults have not always been very trustworthy for many of these students. Part of building trust must also entail interrupting old limiting patterns of thought. Beliefs around poor academic performance in the past needed to be broken and replaced with new supportive beliefs. Think about all the lies teenagers tell themselves or are told by peers or even adults about their ability levels, personalities, their self-identity. For Steve, his identity as a clown meant he was not to be taken seriously and nothing was to be taken seriously. That is completely different than an identity that I have a gift of helping people laugh, which is a wonderful gift. We had to reframe that thought pattern.
Beginning with routines at school, we created new habits around organizing time, space, and thinking. Old beliefs got replaced with new beliefs and old negative associations to school and learning got interrupted and replaced with new ones. When students decide to put in the time and effort change is inevitable. Often times external pressure needs to be applied before the discipline can become internalized or self-discipline. That is what happened with Steve, but once he made the shift change happened.
Steve, for example, went from being a very poor math student in the bottom 10% of his age group to an average math student right at the 50th percentile for his age group. He went from having no friends and being laughed at to being quite popular and funny. There was a very important and subtle change in how he made people laugh that is difficult to describe but none-the-less important. He shifted from doing stupid things that made his peers laugh at him to doing silly things at the appropriate time and place that made his peers laugh with him. He also came to realize he was the master of his own destiny and could do what he delighted in doing. In his case, it was working on and racing cars. He found his passion and purpose and pursued it with gusto. It all started with changing his mindset from a mindset of defeatism to a mindset of a champion. It begin by having a personal breakthrough.
