Who’s SID?

I’ve been reading a great deal about ego recently and particularly how we (the ego) cling to our constructed self. The ego seeks out validation of the construction – who we think we are, and tries to keep it that way. This is partly why we look for and link with people who think the same way as us and avoid people who don’t. It’s why we crave praise for being who we are and doing what we do, to confirm our, quite fixed, view of ourselves.

In his book ‘A new earth’, Eckhart Tolle discusses the ego and all self talk (thoughts) as a separate entity, that is not really who we are. He suggests an element of disassociation with our thoughts as a way of diminishing them. An awareness. By becoming aware of these thoughts as not necessarily true, we can work with them, accept them for what they are but also choose not to believe or act on them.

This exploration, alongside my research into facilitating creativity, led me to wonder about how self talk hinders us to take that step to create something new. The ego likes where it is, thank you very much and does not like change or newness. For a while now I have also been perplexed with an issue at school, where students are blocked from learning new things, trying new ideas and tackling challenging problems, particularly when on their own at home, doing independent learning. They are plagued by thoughts and reasons why not to do it.

So I came up with SID. Here are my initial thoughts about SID (thank you SID) and how to work with him/her. This process is also applicable, I believe, to barriers to creativity in all forms.

Premise

One of the biggest barriers to independent learning and revision is one’s own self-talk. The voice that tells you that:

•  It won’t have much effect, what I learn in lessons is enough
• I’ll just watch this on Netflix now and then do some later
• I am as intelligent as I am and this cannot change, get better or worse
• If I don’t revise then I can always say that the grades I got were without revision and so imagine what I would have got if I had put some work in
• If I do put in some work and don’t achieve then I have proved that I’m not that clever
• It feels boring and I don’t want to do it so I’ll do something more interesting instead

Another barrier to progress is the choice of activities. Many students will choose revision activities that make them feel good – eg reading through their notes and congratulating themselves on 2 hours of passive revision. Activities that challenge and promote progress are more uncomfortable and lead to the self-talk becoming stronger, persuading you not to do them:

• Choosing to do questions that you can’t do yet – “I must be more stupid than others in the class”
• Replicating notes, diagrams in order to memorise – “This takes too much time and is boring”
• Having a go at an essay and talking to the teacher for feedback “I’ll feel awful if the teacher tells me lots of things I have done wrong”
• Practising lots of questions and using mark schemes to make answers better “I just need to mark these to see how I have done, then I know where I am at”. This does not improve understanding, using the mark schemes to make answers better does.
• Setting up a peer support group in subjects. “I just compare myself to everyone else and feel inadequate”

Theory

Many of us believe that these thoughts (and other thoughts about ourselves) are US speaking but this is not the case. This is an aspect of our mind, called the ego that resists change. I call him/her SID – Sly Inertia Daemon. (Inertia means the resistance to movement or change). The practice of disassociation from thoughts (by naming and disidentifying) actively weakens them, even if students don’t believe it.

What can we do?              

When SID appears:

• name him/her, recognise that she/he is on the loose and trying to talk us out of action
• There is no need to have a fight about it with her/him, this only makes her/him stronger
• Have a little chat and say things like “Hi SID, I see what you’re trying to do here, that’s ok”
• “I know you won’t like it SID but I’m going to have a go at some challenging tasks today as its through tackling the difficult stuff, the things I don’t know yet, that improves my chance of success”
• Have a little chuckle when she/he starts up with the comments

How can we communicate this message to students?

• Post images around school ‘who’s SID?’ – to drum up a little curiosity
• Maybe set up a puzzle to solve to discover how he is
• Make videos explaining who she/he is and what she/he does to stop you learning – SID is scared of change!
• Training with staff, to incorporate the idea and terminology into lessons.
• Keep messages round school flowing without too much super- saturation