I’ve thinking a lot lately about my role as a teacher and how I show up for my students and in all my relationships - as a Mum especially. And I’ve been reflecting on an important teaching about “Looking for the Good” that I received from my first yoga teacher.
I was catapulted into this reflection after I listened to a most excellent podcast with Trabian Shorters, an entrepeneur and social change agent, who was being interviewed by Krista Tippett for On Being.
Trabian has coined a term ‘Asset Framing’ to describe a way of seeing people, where the first thing you notice about them is their aspirations and contributions. He’s taken this work into corporations, newsrooms, philanthropic organisations and non-profits with an intention to change our cultural narrative and beliefs so that we can change the world. As Krista explains, “the very way we have spoken of, and therefore thought about, the people and crises we wish to serve has often instead stigmatized and sabotaged them. It has not only doomed some of our best efforts to failure — it leaves all of us prone to cynicism and hopelessness.”
For example, Trabian grew up in Michigan and in the US there’s a term that’s often used to describe young people who grow up in the ‘hood, as Trabian did. The term is ‘At Risk Youth’ and it’s often used in conjunction with this other phrase ‘The School to Prison Pipeline’. But Trabian says, it’s used so much in that context that when you read those words ‘At Risk Youth’ you no longer feel a sense of empathy for the young people they are referring to, but rather write them off as bound for prison, troublesome kids. As though they are somehow responsible for their state of poverty and racial discrimination and other factors that put them at risk. Instead, Trabian suggests, why not use the term ‘Students’ to describe them? They are kids, school kids. They have an aspiration to finish school. How might calling them students change the way we relate to their story?
In Trabian’s own words, Asset Framing is: “defining people by their aspirations and contributions, before you get to their challenges. So whatever is going on in someone’s life, you don’t ignore it, but you don’t define them by the worst moment or the worst experience or the worst potential; none of that. You have to look past their faults, to see who they really are. And even the word “aspiration,” we are very intentional about that, because it has the word “spirit” baked into it.… What we want to do is acknowledge the true person, the true spirit living in someone — the thing that motivates them; what gets them moving. It is not that they are poor. They don’t wake up in the morning inspired by that; their spirit isn’t moved by that. Their spirit isn’t moved by being marginalized, or all that kind of thing. There is something that they aspire to have, to create, to give to someone else. And if you start your relationship with a person by acknowledging what spirit is actually living in front of you, then you’re going to have a different relationship.”
As I was listening to this, I paused the podcast and turned to my friend Kirsti, who was driving with me and said… “Isn’t it so? Aren’t we so used to hearing, for example, about First Nations folk first in terms of high incarceration rates, alcholism, family violence and poor health? But that’s not who they are. That’s how they have been impacted by the colonisation of Australia. That says nothing about a person’s contribution or aspirations but only the hardship they are enduring. It’d be like me introducing you to people I know by saying that you had a traumatic childhood, if you did, or your diagnosis, if you were sick.” Can you imagine? ‘Hey, everyone, meet So and So, they’ve been through hell and have all these problems.’
In fact, in the interview Trabian and Krista talk about an exercise Trabian has folks do where he makes them turn to the stranger in the chair next to them and just list all their faults.
The point, he says, is not only to see how absurd that is, but also to help you to feel, in your body, how instinctively wrong that is.
This idea of seeing what’s good first, was not altogether new to me, though I’d never quite conceived how world altering it could be. When I was studying to become a yoga teacher, I was fortunate to study with Suzanne Faith, who used many of the principles of Anusara Yoga in her training. Anusara Yoga, developed by John Friend and others, has this beautiful approach to working with students where, before anything else you “Look for the Good”. This is how Suzanne taught me to work with people in the asana classroom especially, where you have a bunch of different people in poses and you, as the teacher, have the role and responsibility of helping them create all these shapes and it’s convention to offer ‘alignment’ cues based on what you see.
I remember one day Suzanne was teaching us about how to teach Warrior 2 and she got one of us teacher trainees to jump up and demonstrate the pose. Then she asked the rest of us to offer some cues to the student. I was a classical ballet student from the age of 5 and then a dance teacher in my 20’s so this kind of critiquing of someone’s pose was familiar to me. I jumped in enthusiastically to say all the things I could see were ‘wrong’ with the alignment. Lovingly, Suzanne said to me, “I love your energy Kate and yes, those are some alignment cues that might be applicable to this shape but first, let’s look at Carly and celebrate her. Can you see her strength, her commitment through the way she’s holding herself?” And all of a sudden I did see her. And I really saw her as a human, who was indeed, strong and committed and trying her best. And I saw how I had been so ready to reduce her to the angles of her joints and the lines of her pose and nothing more. By learning to look for the good, we learn to see the spirit of the person, which in turn elevates their humanity and is dignifying.
This has stayed with me. It’s my guiding principle when I’m in the yoga studio leading a practice and when I’m in conversation with the yoga teachers I’ve been mentoring.
As Trabian points out Asset Framing doesn’t negate the need to address issues.
It’s not just ‘look for the good’ and it’s all good. It’s just FIRST see the good and then, see what’s getting in the way of the good, if there’s something getting in the way. This means we don’t reduce people to their problems but we define them more accurately by their aspirations and contributions and address the problems because they are worthy of such support and you believe in their value, their worthiness of care.
Tracing the roots of his work, Trabian remembers how for his grandparents, Christians from the deep South, the Spirit world was ‘the real world’. As in, the Spirit or God inside people is who they really are. He calls their type of faith ‘The Love Doctrine’ and this work of Asset Framing as The Love Doctrine in action.
So it’s a spiritual practice, really. Recognising the God, the Spirit in others. But I think it’s also just a super helpful way in to a more loving and kind way of being in relationship with people, compared to the alternative, which is to be constantly noting faults or areas for improvement. And which motivates more? Being told how shit you are, or the ways you’re struggling or failing to measure up? Or, being recognised for the good you’re doing, while also noting where you could get more traction or have even greater impact, or where something is blocking you from being your best?
I believe it’s the latter and today I had a chance to test it whilst in the supermarket with my kids.
As we were trying to put through all our groceries my daughter was obsessively trying to make sure she got the shiny apple she had picked and so, wouldn’t place it on the scale lest it get mixed up with the other apples and then snatched it away before it had registered and well, all this was causing a riot at the checkout. There were apples rolling everywhere while she held just her one apple, so I angrily barked at her “Matilda, help please!” and huffily started piling things into her hands to hold. In my head I started this whole storyline about how self absorbed she is and was thinking of telling her right off in the car for not caring about anyone other than herself and her bloody apple… “She’s such a pain!” is what I was saying inside my head. (I know, awful!) As we approached the car, words of criticism were nearly all the way to my lips and then I paused, and saw her now carrying the apples, bananas and strawberries with her one apple tucked under her chin. Some of the fog of anger started to clear.
We got to the car and I said “I see you helping darling, and I want you to know I appreciate it, we could have done with a bag but with your help we got all this stuff to the car.” She beamed. She was chuffed to bits that I had noticed her contribution.
Now that I’ve said all this ‘out loud’ it seems kind of obvious. I see how, ‘Looking for the Good’ and recognizing people by their aspirations and contributions is the the more natural way of framing, though not often the automatic or ‘done’ thing. The interview with Trabian talks more about the ‘why’ behind this. It’s to do with the pattern making ability of the brain and the tendency to value information that fits the mental impression we already have, so the narrative is consistent. But if we want to change the world, we need to change the narrative and to do that we have to start creating some impressions that offer an alternative perspective. We have to change the way we frame the conversation. Hence Asset Framing, or Looking for the Good.
And if I want to show up in love for my family and my students, I have to make sure, I’m seeing their aspirations and contributions first and foremost. And really, that’s all my job is, as a Mother, teacher, friend… To love the shit out of you. To see the Spirit in you. And to help that shine through.