Greg Walton
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Thanks for having me.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
The big picture is that all the time in life, we're walking into situations where we face what I call existential or defining questions. Questions like, who am I? Can I do it? Do I belong in the spaces that matter to me? In a relationship context, it might be, do you love me? Can I trust you? And those questions are pejorative. They're often negatively valenced.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And when they pop up in our lives, when the situation puts them on the table for us, We tend to see the world through that pejorative lens, and we tend to see the negative, and that makes us spiral down.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And so interventions like this, this kind of ordinary magic, it's a way to, when you can see that question, it's a way to begin to help people to develop better answers to that question so they can set it aside and come to develop their belonging in a space, come to become the kind of person that they're trying to become.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
The single best example that I can think of is one from our work on lifting the bar. This was an intervention that is in a very particular problem space. And so it might seem kind of removed from people's lives, but I think it's actually really important and applicable.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
This was an exercise that we developed to help kids as they come back to school from juvenile detention and to succeed in that process of reentry. And basically what it is is that we ask young people who are in this circumstance to tell us about who they are as a person, the values that they have, like to be a good role model for a younger brother or sister, to make their parents proud.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And then at the end, this is about a 45-minute experience, soon in that transition, we give kids a platform. We ask them, who's an adult in school who isn't yet but could be an important source of support for you? And what would you like that person to know about who you are as a person, your values, your goals, and challenges you face that that adult could help with?
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And then we take that content and we put it into a letter to that adult. It's a one page letter. But what that letter says is all kids need strong relationships with adults to succeed. This child has chosen you. Here's what they would like you to know about them. Please help them in their transition. Help them in their experience. Thank you very much for your work.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And we found in an initial randomized controlled trial that this actually reduced the rate at which kids recidivated back to juvenile detention by 40 percentage points from 69% to 29%. Wow. And yeah, and just as important is that it completely shifts the experience for the adult. So this is really an intervention that's designed to unleash the best possible self of an adult.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Imagine you're teaching English 10th grade, for example, and you get told by the assistant principal that you've got some kid coming back to school, coming back to your class from juvenile detention. And what are the thoughts that might course through your mind? It's very easy to see. You might think, what problems is this kid going to cause? Is he going to cause me difficulties?
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Is he going to disrupt my class? Maybe he might even be violent. And those are not the thoughts that a teacher needs to have when they're interacting with a kid who's in a difficult circumstance. And so this is a way to give a kid a platform and say, here's who I really am, here's who I want to be, here's who I want to become.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And then the two people can work together to begin to chart a path of growth towards that person. So it's a one-page letter, but it transforms the relationship, how both people see each other, and it ultimately transforms the young person's life.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Yeah. So one of the founders of Head Start, a man who is one of my intellectual heroes, Uri Bronfenbrenner, said every child needs at least one adult who has an irrational attachment to them. And I think Bronfenbrenner understated the case. Every person needs at least somebody else who has an irrational attachment to them.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
So one of the things that we see in close relationship contexts, like romantic relationships, marriages, dating relationships, is that the course of these relationships can vary greatly depending on whether or not the partners really have an idealistic image of each other.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
In the very best relationships, your partner has this image of you as this wonderful person, funnier, kinder, more attractive than anybody else has even than you have. And also that image is fitting for you. It's fitting for who you want to be. And in a relationship, in a very good relationship, you have that image also for your partner.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And you're each kind of trying to become that wonderful person together. That's the theme in the movie Jerry Maguire. In the beginning, Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, is a sports agent. And he... decides to leave the company that he built, the sports agency that he built. He sees it as a godforsaken business. He walks out and he wants to build something honest and true.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And he invites anybody who'd like to join him to join him. And only one person joins him. That's the character played by Renee Zellweger. And their story is a love story, but it's a story of...
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
kind of love in becoming so renee zellweger's character says to her sister at one point i love him i love him for the man he almost is i love him for the man he can become i'm paraphrasing and then at the iconic climax of the movie He says to her, I love you, you complete me. And that's when the relationship fully coheres. And it's this dynamic in which he's trying to become a better person.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
He's trying to become a good person. And she sees that trajectory in him. She sees that image of who he could become.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
and her having that image allows him to realize that and it's the same thing in the juvenile justice context if both people start with mistrust and conflict they're not having a good image of each other but what our intervention does what that ordinary magic is is it is an opportunity for a kid to begin to show that image of the good and successful person they hope to become and
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
the teacher can then hold that image and hold it up for the young person as they're going through the challenges of school. So, for example, in one little detail from that work, we ask teachers, well, imagine that you were in this circumstance and the kid acted out like not in a big way, but they just fell asleep in class and they refused to do their work. What would you do?
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And we find that when teachers get that lifting the barred letter, they're more likely to say things like, I would remind the student of his goals, of the kind of person he's trying to become. So you have this kind of image between the two people that is a wonderful and beautiful image or is a terrible and nasty image.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
And part of ordinary magic is helping people construct that image that's positive, that can help them become the kinds of people individually and together that they want to be.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Well, let me ask you this. I mean, when you were a younger person, when you were thinking about who you wanted to become, was there an adult in your life who had a vision of the kind of person you could become before you even had that, maybe at a time when you were struggling or weren't there yet?
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
I hope everybody has that experience and that experience at the right time and in the right way for them. I think it is something that a lot of people have, but I also think it's something that some people don't get and don't get at the right time. And I think that the juvenile justice example is one example of a particularly terrible circumstance where that's difficult to have.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
Meg Christen coined the phrase women's music, but she would have liked to say it was lesbian music.
Something You Should Know
The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives
One of the founders of Headstart, Uri Bronfenbrenner, said every child needs at least one adult who has an irrational attachment to them. And I think Bronfenbrenner understated the case that every person needs at least somebody else who has an irrational attachment to them.