Enhancing Capacities Program Session 2

Resource link: Workbook: Enhancing Capacities: Session 2

Preparation for Session 2

We will work on the three personal, professional, and social goals you want to bring to the session and group process. Note that you will announce these goals within the group, and they will become public, so beware.

Welcome and Sharing.

Welcome everyone to session two of the Enhancing Capacities Program. We are recording the session, so welcome all.

For a minute or two each, let’s share what we bring to today’s session: what is your intention for today, and what motivation do you connect with right now? And then also, share some words about what positive experience you would like to highlight. Finally, also share your insights about what we are attending to here.

Making the Best of Your Capacities: The BEST model of conscious engagement.

<Needs, Needs Satisfaction, and Wellbeing>

Your capacities are the primary determinants of how you experience life; they turn reality into your actuality (phenomenally speaking). So it makes sense to attend to your capacities, and how do you attend to them profitably?

Enlightened practice and mastery come with a few steps of conscious engagement.

First, what is the need, the goal? What are the relevant skills and resources that serve the need? What is available here, now; what is available near and soon; what is far and not available yet; and what remains out of reach?

Second, pick a skill or resource to attend to. Then, put out your intention to grow and enhance the skill or resource, connect to your motivation for doing so, and commit to taking action.

Third, focus your effort, practice wholeheartedly, monitor and evaluate mindfully, ask and look for feedback, adjust, improve, and learn heaps.

Finally, reach out and ask for support, learn from others, take masterful others as role models, exchange ideas, contribute to forums and panels, share what you achieved and learned, and teach others. Growth is communal; we do not grow in isolation.

Beware, practice makes perfect, but if you practice for a spelling bee without a dictionary, you might be practicing the wrong spelling. Also, don’t end up becoming perfect at something that is not in your interest.

Routines are helping structures that support and ease your life, yet flexibility is a master capacity worth building.

Learn how to ask better questions.

Purposeful Living: Goals and Self-concordant Goal-setting.

For a moment, imagine the different lives people could live by choosing to be “goal conscious.” Having goals, objectifying meaningful, self-concordant goals, empowers people and gives their lives direction.

Moreover, committing to meaningful goals infuses their actions with passion and energy.

Actions and activities become meaningful when you add your ideas, ideals, and values to them.

We recently received the results of more than fifty years of theorizing and research on work orientation. We are told that it makes a difference whether you see your work as a job, career, or calling. In each case, we may outwardly observe the same action or activity, but the personal attitude and the resulting effect on wellbeing are markedly different.

So, consider the three activity-interest pairs you want to focus on for this week. For each, write the interest you want to pursue, the activity that will serve the interest, the personal and communal benefit you foresee, and a possible role model that inspires you. Additionally, find and state the foundational value being served when performing the activity; how is the activity linked to your deeper values?

Think “practical” for the moment; later, you can explicate your grand strategy if you wish.

See if you can discern the larger goal or purpose and if you can notice any feeling of meaningfulness or importance that is arising.

Commitment to a goal and to doing the actions is the fuel of the passion, of the strong, directed desire. Goal consciousness, being aware of the benefits and supporting values, as well as the resources and the obstacles, is the driver of perseverance and stamina. Goal consciousness reminds us to bring our hope to the task, to find the will and the way, and to heed our mindset.

Hope, Mindset, Perseverance.

Hope, within the context of grit, is the expectation that our effort will impact our aimed-for outcome and thus create a better future. It is an active state that creates a mindset of possibility. It is different from a passive, indiscriminately positive future outlook or a faith that the cosmos or god will favor me in some way.

A growth mindset or learner identity is linked to this active hope. Mindset is the mental attitude that originates from and feeds back into deeply held beliefs about how the world works, about human nature, and how society operates. Mindset reveals itself in one’s daily speech, mainly in words of possibility, opportunity, change, betterment, or approach-oriented words, versus words focusing on why something is not possible, can’t be done, how one should expect defeat and breakdown, in short, words indicating withdrawal or worry about preserving and controlling. As you might suspect, these are also closely linked to one’s locus of control.

Considering these short descriptions, what would you suspect is the link between hope, mindset, and perseverance? And what is the impact of perseverance on sustained goal pursuit and, in effect, goal attainment?

Another closely related concept is optimism, defined as an explanatory style. The dimensions of permanence (permanent versus temporary) and pervasiveness (pervasive without boundaries versus localized and limited impact), in addition to personalizing undesired outcomes and discounting one’s contribution to favorable outcomes (or the opposite), make up one’s explanatory style.

A natural question arises: What explanatory style is conducive for individuals to take responsibility for betterment, take action, and make a continued effort?

Linking back to sustained goal pursuit and goal attainment, how would optimism figure into perseverance?

To summarize, a self-concordant goal that feeds one’s interest makes passionate commitment easier. In turn, a growth mindset coupled with hope and optimism energizes intentional, goal-directed action, which builds and maintains perseverance. These components operate in concert to empower one’s grit and carry the person powerfully to endure and achieve. Meaning and self-efficacy are byproducts of committed, engaged action.