I can summarize the entirety of my graduate school work in three (3) words : 1) Roles; 2) Self; and, 3) Reflection. Through my work, I was able to study and develop an approach to leadership and educational psychology that neutralized emotion within a social system. Although we all know that emotion is a byproduct of our perceived wins/losses, it’s really easy to get “lost in the moment” and forget that we exist through the roles we fill and ignore the laws/agreements of those roles. That’s when we are apt and ripe to “take things personally” and act through emotions. I know this because, even though I know better, I am the king of taking things personally.
The thing is, I place a lot of value and meaning into the work I produce. That is, if I produce good work, then (in my mind), I am a “good” person. Therefore, when anyone criticizes my work, that must mean (in my mind) that I am a “bad” person. Who wants to be a “bad” person? Isn’t that the definition of taking something personally: We hear something about ourselves that means we are a bad person. However, it probably isn’t true.
In order to not take things personally, then, I have to remind myself that my work is in fact open to inspection and criticism and that the work I produce is done through a role and not through some cosmic moral belief in good versus bad. Simply put, work is an output of a role’s requirements and although I am a person filling the role, there is no higher order morality in someone’s response to that work. Some might argue that there is, but if someone’s role requirement is to play basketball (for example), playing basketball well is no indication of someone’s morality. Although we do bring our personal value systems to our role, a good person who produces crappy work shouldn’t be venerated because she is a “good person.” Similarly, if a miserable human being produces great work, we should be able to look at the merit of the work and ignore the crappy person who created it.
But, I don’t always remember to remind myself to look at my work through the role I fill and not through higher order evaluations of my person. I should strive to remember that roles are largely objective constructs and I make an agreement with the role (and organization that created the role) to complete its requirements. If I can’t act through the requirements, that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. Perhaps it just means that I’m a bad fit for the role….either way, defining myself as a good or bad person is probably an illusion anyway….
