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L
EARNING
TO
L
EARN
: B
ECOMING
A
S
ELF
-G
ROWER
407
“Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”
—Les Brown
R
EFLECTION
In this experience you will use self-assessment as a way to reflect on your tendency to allow others to write
your emotional scripts (i.e., push your buttons, provoke or upset you). When you are able to manage your
own affective reactions to situations, you will be able to use those situations to your advantage, taking
from them what is useful and learning from them what contributes to your own self-growth.
P
URPOSE
So much of life, both in higher education as well as society in general, seems to be all about performance
— demonstrating that you know or can do something — and the evaluation of performances. Rewards such
as raises or recognition are usually based upon performance appraisal, for instance. In college, faculty and
supervisors are responsible for evaluating student performances on an ongoing basis. This is why you receive
a lot of evaluation feedback as a student. Beyond learning situations, just about everyone in our culture and
society judges how well you are performing at any given time and in any particular situation based upon a set
of formal or, more often, implicit expectations. The ability to take this feedback, which tends to be evaluative
and judgmental, and turn it into assessment feedback so that it can be used to help trigger continuous growth
is the single greatest skill needed by those who are working to be self-growers.
O
BJECTIVES
1. Perform at a high level during an extreme evaluation situation by managing anxiety.
2. Separate your current performance from your identity.
3. Shift from a mindset of self-evaluation to one of self-assessment by controlling your reactions to other
people’s evaluations of your performances.
4. Discover which key words, tones, and body language trigger your strongest reactions and learn how
to respond productively to these environmental triggers.
D
ISCOVERY
E
XERCISE
Identify two of your most successful public performances in the past and why you are most proud of them.
Did you feel any anxiety about performing in public in these instances? If so, how did you manage your
anxiety? Why were these performances successful?
Now consider what you believe to be the most disastrous performances in your life. Why were these
performances unsuccessful? Did other people comment on your performances? If so, how did you react
to their feedback? How did you feel? Which feedback was hurtful, and which was helpful? How did each
kind of feedback affect your future performances?
Use the space on the following page to record your responses to the preceding prompts. Afterward, answer
the Exploration Questions.