unfold x Mestival: a workshop on limiting and enabling beliefs
or on what car to drive in the Game of Life
“Work work work work work work, [undefineable sounds that nobody really understands but sings along anyway]” — R. R. Fenty
Last week we gave a workshop at Mestival, a festival on work, career and choices, organized by De Kwekerij. De Kwekerij wants to provide students with a place where things as slowness and vulnerability is valued, and where people can help each other on “the road to maturity”; where there is still space for doubt and questions on themes such as work, love, happiness and success.
They do this by organising Bloeikassen (a nice little pun on “bloei’ [bloom] and “broeikas” [greenhouse]) – short interactive workshops on these different themes – and once in a while a festival with multiple workshops, guest lectures and music. Their second edition was about the theme of work; and so we thought this to be the perfect occasion to share some of our knowledge and beliefs on this topic.
So who is this ‘we’, actually? Short introduction: a while ago we – Jorik, Tessa, and Anneke – decided to start a company. We aimed big: embarking on a mission to change the world of work, creatively. People spend a big part of their life working, but often those same people are forgotten and “what” seems more important than “how”. We think that in this way, a lot of human potential goes to waste - time for a change.
Enter unfold.
A festival on choices, current context of work and the life of students resonated quite well with our mission. As one of our core values is transparency, and change goes all the faster by sharing and spreading, we want to give you a little taste of how we work, what we did at the festival, and what we learned.
“Beep beep, beep beep, yeah!” - J. Lennon / P. McCartney
Life, personally as well as professionally, is quite often about choices – some more right than others. Being a “twintiger” (an individual between the age of twenty and thirty, similar to the recent “millennial” buzzword) takes you through a period of life where a lot of doubt, insecurity, and wrong decisions slap you in the face sometime – hey we know, we have been there and are still there sometimes.
To be able to define what is a right or wrong decision is not easy. Something that can be of help is the distinction between limiting and enabling beliefs.
When making choices, there are certain beliefs that underlie those, helping or hindering us to move forward. Limiting beliefs are the ones that hold us back; they are often about ourselves and our own identity. “I don’t have the right skills” was a shared one among the crowd, for example. Quite often, we find that these beliefs depict a static situation. A small and easy step towards changing this, is considering it as a current, but convertible stage. It’s actually quite like the car: being able to adapt according to circumstances. “I don’t have the right skills - right now” opens up possibilities. It takes your mindset from one that is fixed, into one that is able to grow, develop and change (for more on this; check out writings by Carol Dweck and her TEDtalk here).
Many of the shared limiting beliefs were also linked to fear of the unknown or insecurity. Surprisingly, the same fear returned when switching to enabling beliefs, but then as a motivator instead of a barrier. “If I am scared, then I know that it is actually exactly what I need to do”, someone said. (Or, in the words of actor Kevin Costner: “I usually know when I’m on to something when I’m a little bit afraid of it. I go: Wow, I could mess this up”). This is a perfect example of the growth mindset: I see possibilities, I am not there yet, but the only way to get there is to do it and experiment. It contains a belief that, in the end, you will find a way to get to the place you ultimately want to be.
Recognising a fear that is limiting as something positive enables someone to move forward: the feeling of out-of-comfort tells us that we’re getting close to that magic. Similarly, it also helps to know what is not helpful and to realize what things NOT to do anymore. Sometimes, this generates results even more quickly. To address this in the workshop, we asked our participants to make - instead of a bucket-list - a fuck-it list. A not to-do list basically; asking
what kind of thing(s) do you need to let go, in order to move forward?
“Nobody said it was easy” — C. Martin
What kind of things stop you from achieving your goals or your version of success? As unfold, we firmly believe in experiential learning. To make an idea more tangible, it helps to make it physical as well, so that not only your brain, but also your body takes part in the learning. So how exactly did we do this? Although we had a short timespan for this workshop, we explicitly did not want to sit and discuss, we wanted some action!
These fuck-its needed to be let go, literally. We therefore asked everyone to write down every single thing of their list on different post its and to throw them away in a bucket. Of course, some habits are easier to let go then others, so throwing in those post-its was not going to be easy. Therefore, we asked our doubting twentiers to reflect on every post-it and ask themselves the question:
How hard do I think this will be to let go?
Depending on their answer, they could choose a distance from the bucket and try to lose their limiting habits. This resulted in the following scene:
“And you say, what have I got to lose?” — P. R. Martin
So apart from the fact that throwing post-its in a bucket can be actually quite meaningful, what else did we learn?
1. Young(ish) people are quite motivated to seriously (ok semi-seriously, did you see those smiley faces?) spend time and attention on a workshop about work, choices and decisions – did we already mention our workshop was at 11pm on a Friday? 11. pm. On. A. Friday. And they were all just there!
2. Physical action is not only fun; it adds to the learning of an idea. It can also help in letting people become owner of the space they’re in. Because of the active character, we started off all together with putting the chairs in the back, changing the room from lined-up seats facing just us as presenters, into an open circle where everybody could see each other. This instantly and very simply creates a feeling of achievement, equality and openness, which contributes to creating a safe space to share fears and doubts with strangers.
3. Although these “millennials” probably won’t own a car anymore, it is still a pretty fitting thing when figuring out the Game of Life, driving that road to maturity. And you are never too old to get a convertible.
