Who Matters to You? Tell your Story!

First-Year Seminar (FYS) 101-124, We’re All “Humans of New York,” needs your help! This semester this class is recreating the popular humansofnewyork.com blog and its recent “Quarantine Stories” and is looking for participants who want to share a happy story. Story ideas include “Maybe something amazing happened to you. Maybe you overcame something that seemed impossible. Maybe somebody changed your life, and you want the world to know about them.” Send a short description of the story and a photo to College of Arts & Sciences Assistant Dean and Director of Academic Innovation and Associate Professor of Exercise Science Jessica Peacock, Ph.D., at jpeacock@su.edu by Friday, Sept.25, and if chosen, you will conduct a Zoom interview with a student from the course. Stories will be shared with the Shenandoah community later in the semester. 

Tell us the best thing that’s ever happened to you! Or even better — tell us about the best person that’s ever happened to you! Questions? Contact Dr. Jessica Peacock at jpeacock@su.edu.

 Changing your perspective

Changing your perspective is a very valuable tool for understanding a situation better and avoiding false views. The simplest example of this is the literal one. If you look at a room from a different position, you will see different things.

Let's PUKE

What is something that you know for sure is true? What is something that you love and you can't imagine yourself never doing, seeing, eating, saying, feeling, again? What would you be willing to try that you never thought you would? 

Let's look at these two videos

Jolene

Stayin Alive

Changing perspectives and trying new things!

Watch these two videos

Look at these photographs

Read this article 

“Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb

We have a choice in how we view things. Consider these thinking techniques:

Think like someone else
One way to look at your challenge differently is by imagining how someone else might try to solve your problem. For maximum effect, pick someone (in)famous. What would Dr. Crowley do in your situation? What about Oprah, Tom Brady, or Drake? Your famous associate doesn’t even have to be real. Imagining how James Bond, Harry Potter, or Luke Skywalker might attempt to solve your problem can be just as insightful.

The Time Traveler
Imagine for a moment that time travel will be invented at some point in the future. Hold that thought.  

Imagining how your experienced 90-year-old self would give you advice, helps to create psychological distance. The exercise allows you to shift your perspective and to see approaches you would otherwise overlook.

Make it worse
Another great way to change your view on a problem is by imagining ways to worsen the situation. This might seem ridiculous, but if there’s anything reading this article might have taught you, it is that there can be a lot of value in ridiculousness. Thinking about ways to make your situation even more horrible than it already leads to surprising insights.  

The ‘Make it worse’ technique consists of three very simple steps:

Step 1. How could you make your situation even worse?
Step 2. What could be the possible benefits of this aggravation?
Step 3. Use new insights to generate as many ideas as possible for tackling the initial problem.

The Reversal
To change your perspective, it sometimes is enough to just need to change your question. After all, the way you describe your problem determines what direction you will look for solutions. Actively change your problem statement and you’ll force yourself to generate more original solutions. 

One way of doing this is changing the order of the keywords in your problem statement. For instance, don’t ask ‘How do we make sure that fewer people take the car to their work?’, but ‘How do we make sure that fewer cars take people to their work?’ While such a ‘reversed’ challenge sometimes sounds odd and illogical, it often sparks much more creative solutions. In this case, it might lead you from pondering about different means of transportation (like trains or bikes) to considering ways to get people to carpool (fewer cars for the same number of people).

Assignment for Tuesday

1. Look at something differently this weekend.  

2. Take a picture of it.

3. Describe it.

4. Now, describe it differently.

Then a 1-page puke about your process of figuring out how to think differently.

What did you do?
What made you do it?
What surprised you?

Be prepared to show you the photo(s) and talk about thinking differently.