“Please, come into class confused…”

When I asked my daughter about her Fall classes, she said she was excited about them all! When I asked for more particulars, she explained that one teaching fellow asked the students to, “Please come into class confused. The reading is hard, the language archaic, but just do it anyway and come to class confused.” I so love that! It reminds us that our intention for the classroom is “to learn,” rather than “to impress,” “to sound smart,” “to get a good grade.”

I worked with a woman who was top of her field, but found herself suddenly unable to speak in a continuing education class of her peers. She came to me to find her voice. She said, “In the rest of my work, I am confident: I give keynotes, I present at academic conferences, I am esteemed in my field. But for some reason, in this class, I can’t speak. I’m so afraid I’ll say something wrong or sound stupid.”

I asked what her intention for the class was.

She thought for a while and said, “I really want to learn these new skills.”

“Aha! Your intention is to learn! That’s pretty clear.”

“Yes, but when the class starts, all I can think of is how brilliant the other students sound and how complicated the material is and how it’s all new to me and they all sound like they know it already.”

“It sounds like you’re default intention is something like, to sound smart or to not make a mistake.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Those are not helpful intentions. The first, ‘to sound smart,’ puts the attention on you instead of on others. Intentions that focus our attention on ourselves can make us self-conscious, self-critical, even self-aggrandizing. Self is not to point of communication. We communicate for others. And it’s just impossible to play a negative intention like ‘to not make a mistake.’ Try to not do something and we just put our energy into what we don’t want. It reminds me of something I heard about worry: ‘Worry is like praying for something we don’t want to happen.’ A helpful intention is: a clear, chosen, action, is framed in the positive, and puts the attention on the others, rather than boomeranging the attention back on ourselves. Are there other intentions that might work better for you?”

She ended up going into her next class with the intention to support the other speakers, rather than to be seen as brilliant. She used phrases like: “I’d never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense!” “I came in confused, but what Sarah said helped so much.” Just supporting others gave her a voice. And what followed was an easy transition to adding her own ideas, as well:

“I totally agree with that! In fact, I was thinking that maybe we could build on…”

You get the idea. Once again, a clear, conscious, chosen, positive, active intention that puts the attention on the other, relieves us of the burden of self-focus, and saves the day!