Why Being Brave for Yourself Can Create a More Connected World with Dr. Jody Carrington
I’m so excited to welcome back Dr. Jody Carrington, our guest from episode 8, for a conversation about connection, relationships, and being brave. As the author of Kids These Days* and newly released Teachers These Days*, we catch up on everything that’s happened since she last joined us and how her mindset and strategy have changed since writing her first book. Jody also shares why connection is more important than ever, especially as we’re adapting to life while the global pandemic continues, and gives us brave actions we can take to start reconnecting.
Who is Dr. Jody Carrington?
Whether you’re a teacher by trade, a parent, or someone who’s in the online space this episode is for you. I can’t wait to dive into today’s conversation with Dr. Jody Carrington about connection, relationships, and being brave. Dr. Jody was one of our first guests when we launched the show and we talked about how to have more wellbeing through the relationships and connections we make. That we’re wired for connection and need it now more than ever. That was recorded pre-COVID and released during quarantine so boy, was that a much-needed message.
As a refresher, Dr. Jody Carrington is a speaker, author, and overall game-changer. She’s the best-selling Canadian author of Kids These Days: A Game Plan For (Re)Connecting With Those We Teach, Lead, & Love*. She just released Teachers These Days: Stories & Strategies for Connection* on August 1, 2021 and it’s been #1 on Amazon in Canada for ALLL BOOKS. All the books.
What Changed Between Books?
Jody’s first book, Kids These Days* was really a “theoretical perspective on how kids and adults interact and how the kids aren't the problem.” She used a ton of research and wrote from a large psychological perspective. But for Teachers These Days*, Jody partnered up with kindergarten teacher, Laurie Mackintosh, “one of my favorite educators on the planet. And as privileged, white women, tried to give our perspective on the things in the world that I think we need to be connected to most in the classroom, what are the strategies? What are the stories, and we asked teachers,” using the definition of teacher that anyone giving knowledge, traditionally and non-traditionally, “teachers in classrooms or lecture halls, but bus drivers and custodians and librarians and hockey coaches and gym teachers, and those, you know, before and after school care providers, your best friend's mom, like we all really are the people who impart wisdom.” These days, teachers are really the most “important people on the planet because we don't just change lives, but we save them.”
There’s a theory behind Teachers These Days*, Jody and Laurie knew they wanted to include a lot about strategy. But what came next were questions like “how do we do that? How do we show up? I think what changed a lot for me, between those two books was really my own understanding of my implicit biases. You know, thanks in no small part to George Floyd and the BLM movement and the trans lives matter movement. And I knew that in the classrooms where so many kids feel marginalized and struggle more than anybody else. How do we bring light to that more in terms of strategies and solutions? And sort of just the information that I think all teachers need to know. So it's much more practical than Kids These Days*, that would be probably the biggest difference and I think we just got wiser.”
One of the very real problems teachers are and will be facing is implicit biases. Jody features a full chapter on implicit biases in Teachers These Days* because it isn’t talked about enough, whenever she asks anybody about “their ideas on feminism, or should men and women be treated equally? Or are you a racist? All of those questions that we answer with our bodies right out of the know, like, of course, I'm anti-racist. I have a gay friend, I think women should be out of the kitchen. We answer those things truthfully, but also politically correctly. We do those things right out of the gate with our prefrontal cortex, but we don't often slow down really to understand is our implicit biases. How are we raised? What did we hear?”
For example, Jody was raised in rural Alberta, Canada, a small town where indigenous people were extremely marginalized because of colonization and she was “raised in a way that would say drive fast through indigenous reserves. And homeless people are to be feared and they should just work harder. It's about implicit biases, or just bringing awareness to those things. And it's really just having those conversations about the fact that we all aspire to be kind, lovely, amazing people. And we all come with a story. So how do we just be much more aware of our story, so that we can be authentically who we are? Whatever that is?”
The Bravery Behind Connecting
In the history of the free world, we have never been more disconnected than we are right now. But it isn’t always easy to go out and started to build connections. If you’re reading this and feeling uncomfortable just thinking about putting yourself out there to make new connections, I feel you. Dr. Jody says “here's the thing for me is that we often think we're doing it for other people, but we're actually doing it for ourselves.”
It can take a bit of bravery to get in the habit of making connections, but as Brene Brown defines bravery, “brave for me, is doing something with your whole heart where you can predict the outcome. You got to go all-in, right? I get the most remarkable responses at a stoplight when you just give me a one, two, I mean, most people think I'm trying to pick them up, which is fine. But the other thing that's really helpful is at your coffee shop, say the baristas name. And so when you use it, our name, my name, your name is the first word you and I respectively learned, okay? And so it very much pulls your prefrontal cortex into the moment because you need to sort of identify how did she know me? This is how we interact. But most of the time, I can tell you probably like 70% of the time, people will say this to me. Do I know you? Like how did you know my name and I was like, well, it's on your boob. We go so mindlessly through our day, like, thanks very much, have a nice day, thanks very much, have a nice day. And when we really pull the people in our communities back into perception or back into sort of our idea of awareness, we're so much healthier together.”
The people we interact with on a daily basis become part of our circle and our interactions and investment in the people we’re around more frequently “is so beneficial because she's now kinder to the person who comes up next. Mother Teresa talked about this, our job is simply to cast a stone. And that feels so much more manageable than you know, oh my gosh, in this lifetime, how can I undo racism or poverty or you know, gender discrepancy? It's really about No, no, no, you're not that good. Who do you think you are? cast a stone? That's all you need to do today? Oh my gosh, yes. Okay.” So I want to challenge you to start making those connections, call your barista by name, wave at someone at a stoplight. Not only does it impact that person and then becomes a ripple effect, but it also gets you in the habit and more comfortable as you do. In our current world, reconnection is so important, and it ultimately starts with one simple act of bravery.
Becoming More Connected
Some of the other connection building small actions Jody speaks about are “every single day, if you can think about this idea around connecting to your people in some way, right, like so compliments, waving, notes on cars, you know, one of my favorite things to do is to like write an anonymous note and put it on a first responders vehicle. So like, I often stopped by the local police station or the firefighters, or paramedics or whatever. And just say, I just don't know if anybody's told you this today, but I'm so grateful you're keeping the city safe.”
We’re also conditioned to be suspicious of random kindness in some way, we’re given a compliment and wonder what that person wants. Or our partner randomly tells us we look great and we wonder what’s really going on with them. For Jody, she’ll say to her husband “I'm so grateful that I'm married to you, you know, you're so great. He'll say like, what did you buy? The people we love the most are suspicious when we're kind of like that because I mean, the more invested we are in people the more our filters decrease. And so that's what you want in relationships where you're connected. But typically, then what we forget is those necessary niceties that are invested in relationships that we really want to foster, right? I'm so much nicer to my best friend's kids than I am to my own personal children. So how about we just start there? You know, I mean, like, that comes to love on our people, but just an awareness of that allows us to shift that I think just a little.”
To listen to the full conversation click the links beneath the main photo to listen on your favorite platform!
Affirmation
I embrace the oneness and divine nature of every living being and seize the opportunity to give kindness wherever I go.
Links From the Show
Get Teachers These Days*
Get Kids These Days*
Follow Jody on Instagram.
Join our private Facebook group here.
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