by Nadeem Ahmad | May 31, 2024 | Growth
This blog is based on a conversation with Lynn Sumida and Jeff Brown, founders of Expanding You.
There’s a fun little team building challenge that you may be familiar with; using only scotch tape and dry spaghetti noodles, build the tallest tower possible that can support a single marshmallow at its top. Called the Marshmallow Challenge, this test was used in a study by designer Tom Wujec that compared the performance of different groups in this kind of challenge.
Teams, on average, were able to suspend the marshmallow about 20 inches in the air, but there were a couple surprises. Notably, lawyers and business graduate students performed well below average, while CEOs scored just barely above it. Coming in several steps above the CEOs, however, were kindergarteners.
How is it that decades of education and experience did not allow these professionals to surpass children in this challenge? One common theory is that, while the adults would begin by deliberating on plans and divvying roles between one another, the kids would simply get hands on noodles and go to town.
A kindergartner with an idea doesn’t stop to ask if everyone agrees and thinks it’ll work – they just try and see! If another kid saw that wasn’t working, they had very few reservations about grabbing extra materials and testing an idea of their own. Where adults engage in a political and social dance of identifying leaders, being polite, and trying to appear smart or helpful, children simply play.
The good news is that the creative, playful approach of our childhood is still accessible to us as adults – it’s just obscured by a lifetime of conditioning. This conditioning forms what Exanding You calls the Constructed Identity (familiar to those who have read how our relationship with identity changes) and it has a number of defining characteristics:
The EGO seeks to preserve our Constructed Identity and maintain a sense of safety, familiarity, and certainty. Its purpose is to protect us from perceived threats to our well-being, often at the expense of growth and change.
To see how this fits with your own experience, imagine yourself starting the Marshmallow Challenge with a team of strangers – what would you do? Would you offer a suggestion, or wait for someone else to speak first? If people rejected your idea, how would you feel?
If you notice thoughts such as “oh, I don’t want to be rude,” “what do I know,” or “this idea better work,” you might be engaging through a Constructed Identity. These thoughts are guided by fear, such as fear of seeming aggressive, arrogant, or unintelligent. The EGO uses this fear to keep us in familiar, tried-and-true patterns rather than engaging in a way that risks our sense of safety.
The Constructed Identity is formed early on and developed over time. Moments of stress or of praise subtly (or not so subtly) inform our young, growing brains of the behaviors that will help us avoid discomfort and gain recognition. Beliefs are formed and then reinforced by similar experiences throughout our lifetime, creating patterns in our relationships with self, others, money, and more.
Constructed patterns bring varied results – you might have learned to value work ethic, receiving raises and accolades in your professional life. Or you might feel like you keep dating the same person over and over, each time ending the same as the last. As we pay more and more attention to the thoughts and beliefs embedded in these repeated experiences, we give focus to the constructed identity, taking it away from the adventurous, trusting, authentic self that characterized our childhood.
It is this over-attentiveness that makes our beliefs seem “real” and keeps us from challenging them. The Expanding You programs shine a light on these beliefs and how they are operating in your life. Let’s imagine that, at some point in elementary school, you excitedly jumped up from your desk when the lunch bell rang, eager to dine and play with your friends.
This was met with a scolding from your teacher who saw this as disruptive and rude, and immediately your EGO takes note that being overly expressive risks your social safety. You start to become more vigilant in how you display your emotions, seeking to avoid the discomfort of potentially having your feelings responded to negatively.
Time and again you restrain yourself, rarely (if ever) challenging the constructed identity’s idea of how to behave. As you get older, it takes up a larger and larger part of your attention and informs more and more of your behavior.
This mindset is depicted at the center of Lynn Sumida and Jeff Brown’s model for how their concept of the Constructed Identity changes over time. Depicted above, the center is where many of us spend the most of our time. In this space we worry about what we “should” be, do, or say. We fret about things that are outside of our control, such as peoples’ reactions to us or events that have already happened or have yet to happen.
The good news is that we can move away from fear and shift our attention back to the loving, Authentic Self. First, recognize that the Constructed Identity doesn’t actually become more true or real as our attention to it grows; like a tiny pimple on a beautiful face, it fights for our attention thinking that, if we obsess over it, we can protect ourselves from embarrassment.
Rather than clinging to an old belief that “pimples are gross” or “everyone will notice,” we can invite new perspectives to lead us, like “my body is a whole ecosystem of its own” or “people like me for so much more than my face.” We let go of our certainty that “people will see it” and engage curiously with uncertainty, open to new experiences of ourselves and others.
Challenging the paper tiger of the Constructed Identity in this way demonstrates to ourselves that the beliefs and experiences recorded within are only as powerful as the attention we give them. In fact, having held constructed beliefs in the past allows us to be even more powerful in the present. Notice the difference between the left- and rightmost stages above, where the identities overlap; the glowing spot on the right is the Location of Integration.
This is where we have learned to accept the Constructed Identity for its contributions to our growth and security. Here we notice its influence non-judgmentally and may choose to engage with it curiously. With this awareness we have new respect for our choices and our experiences.
This is where, you may be happy to hear, we adults can surpass 5 and 6 year-olds. While they may step into the Authentic Self more readily, it is without the wisdom and appreciation that comes with integration.
So practice checking in with yourself – where are you? Are you guided by fear, or love? Our Feeling Wheel is a powerful tool for this, if you get stuck.
If your beliefs feel limiting, what new perspectives might you focus on instead? Soon enough, with practice, you might be able to challenge some kindergarteners to the Marshmallow challenge… and win!
by Nadeem Ahmad | May 31, 2024 | Growth
This blog is based on a conversation with Lynn Sumida and Jeff Brown, founders of Expanding You.
Before diving into the ingredients we recommend for an upward, transformational path, I want you to recall the best meal you’ve ever had. Picture it there in front of you and remember what it felt like to take a bite – or perhaps scoop – of that delicious meal. Think about the flavors and textures it has, and the satisfied feeling of leaning back as the last morsel turns to bits in your mouth.
Hopefully your mouth is watering now, but don’t run off for a snack just yet – hang on to that memory and I promise to make the most of it in just a few paragraphs.
Firstly, since you are here and reading this, it is likely that you desire some kind of transformation in your life. Some event or events have occurred and inspired a desire for growth within you. I would like you to consider what it was that started you on this path. Was it a high point? A feeling of “wow, I need to figure out how to get more of that!” Or was it a low point – a sudden realization that something has to change?
Chances are, it’s a mix of both, but regardless which type of experience has brought you here, Expanding You is glad to have you with us and their team wants to give you tools to help steer you towards that “wow” feeling. The first tool, in fact, is one you are already familiar with – you just may not have realized it yet.
This tool is called the Stuck Triangle, and we have all experienced its effects. Those of you who had a recent low point might be feeling it acutely. Have you ever felt that, no matter what you do, you always get the same results? Do you feel your life is full of the same patterns or habits? Does it seem like there must be more, but you just don’t know where or how to find it? This is the stuff the Stuck Triangle is made of.
It may even be that the patterns we find ourselves stuck in are quite comfortable; being “stuck” in this sense is not a painful or unpleasant experience so much as an incomplete one. We get the sense that we have stagnated while there is more left for us to uncover, know, and feel. So why did we stop growing?
Well, the first ingredient of the stuck triangle is a belief – one that was likely formed very early in your life. Perhaps the belief was formed after a math test, when your teacher handed you back a paper that said “study harder” in glaring red ink. Or maybe the belief was formed in your childhood bedroom, while you sheepishly scooted toys under the bed because mom told you she can’t stand it when company comes over and sees your mess.
Whatever it was or whenever it happened, you likely formed an underlying belief about yourself or the world that unwittingly locked in. At that moment, the idea that “I’m not smart” or “I have to maintain appearances to be loved” entered into your programming.
It’s actually a sensible thing to do – our minds and nervous system try to protect us by recognizing danger (whether physical or emotional, real or imagined) and adapting our behaviour to avoid that danger. But many of us have since discovered that such adaptations often hurt as much as they help, and they obscure the person that we really want to be.
Those learned behaviours, in fact, are the next ingredient of being stuck; after a belief has been formed, we might spend years picking easy classes, avoiding homework, or anxiously tidying up, desperately avoiding the perceived danger in challenging our beliefs.
This creates recurring experiences which turn the belief into a habit – by avoiding learning, we perpetuate the idea that we are not smart. By seeking out and treasuring each comment of, “you keep such a lovely home!” we reinforce the belief that we must “do” to earn love. This creates proof in our minds that the belief is real and the cycle of being stuck continues.
Now, if this only happened with beliefs that were aligned with our innermost selves, we’d be all set! But as I’m sure you’ve experienced, some beliefs result in stress, frustration, and various other feelings of incongruence between what we think we should be or do and what we truly want and value.
At Expanding You transformation is viewed as the process of becoming more congruent and whole, and our next tool shows us the way towards it:
Growth is built upon the conscious integration of new experiences and knowledge. Moving upwards towards transformation means acquiring new ideas, perspectives, or tools we can use to interact with the world. It means seeking out genuinely new experiences to replace the recurring ones we were stuck in before, and leaning into tools and experiences until they become intuitive to your daily life.
A word of warning – in Expanding You’s experience, focusing on acquiring new knowledge and creating new experiences doesn’t immediately make us unstuck. You can still get stuck by creating a new pattern of seeking, but not applying, new knowledge. Some of us start finding tools for mindfulness, communication, or emotional intelligence and end up creating a great big box of pristine, hardly-used tools.
Think back for a moment to that delicious meal we talked about at the start – that wonderful flavor is our litmus test for a “new experience.” Getting stuck in knowledge is like reading the recipe for that delightful dish over and over, buying the special spoon, mixer, or slicer that we might not even know how to use, and then imagining what the meal is going to taste like without ever preparing the dish.
As an example of this, I currently have in my kitchen a ravioli maker that I have not once used. And, in the kitchen of my mind, I hold at least three recipes for different ravioli dishes. Next to those, my mind has a few ideas for assertive conversation with my roommates about dirty dishes.
Those also remain untouched. This causes our kitchens and relationships to become cluttered with unused utensils and unspoken thoughts. We may fantasize about, but never practice or experience, the meal or relationship we desire.
Lynn Sumida highlights that sometimes new knowledge is simply too advanced for us when we find it. We might think we understand a tool intellectually, but find that practicing it doesn’t give us the new experience we were expecting.
Let’s say I came across a beautiful quote:
“Truth is always what IS happening, not your story about
what SHOULD be happening.”
~ Byron Katie
Perhaps I decided to apply this wisdom to my situation around the dirty dishes; I tell myself “the truth isn’t that my roommates SHOULD wash their dishes, it’s that they don’t want to wash the dishes.” I then try to ignore the dishes in the sink, congratulating myself on my newfound enlightenment as the resentment I have with my housemates continues to simmer underneath.
Using knowledge in this incomplete way – where a problem isn’t solved so much as glazed over – is often due to misunderstanding how that knowledge is supposed to be used. This is why it is so important to sit with new knowledge, looking within ourselves until we feel a genuine shift in our understanding of the knowledge before applying it.
While we are absorbing new knowledge and creating new relationships with ourselves and the world around us, it is important that we remain patient with the process of integration. It takes time to practice putting knowledge into action, to create new behaviour, reflect on our experience, and to process those results into wisdom.
A good marker that you’ve reached an integrated state is when you can share your journey with others. Describe how your experience has changed you and what brought you to your new insight; if the change feels clear, you’ve probably given growth the time it needs to be digested.
But the time to integrate doesn’t have to feel like waiting – imagine it as building and anticipating. Remember that mouth-watering experience of your favorite meal? That’s the type of thinking that makes integration feel easy to work towards.
Every time you run into a hard conversation, a stressful moment, or maybe just get a little bored, picture the delicious spread awaiting you. Suddenly you’re not just buying milk, peeling potatoes, or boiling water – you’re making the world’s best baked potato soup!
Now that I’ve worked up your appetite, I’ll let you get to cooking. But as you do, try to practice the knowledge you’ve gained here. Think about where you may be stuck in old beliefs. Pick one, or maybe two, and use the guidance from Expanding You’s Stuck Triangle to get clarity on what isn’t working.
Then the Growth Triangle will help you move forward. What new thought, idea, belief would help you? Remind yourself of your goal: the wonderful flavors that await you when the cooking is done.
And don’t forget to give yourself time before, during, and after to process, and to keep your senses peeled for a truly new experience within yourself – you’ll know you’re on the right track if life starts to smell more and more delicious.
