Universal Design In Life And Work

My profession focuses a lot on learning and learning is one of those activities that we often underestimate the complexity of it we tend to think in terms of education when we talk about learning so we kind of pack these two things up into one little box and we say learning is education so as long as we're being educated and quotation marks then we're learning somehow but I found over the course of my life having been student for many many many years and for now being a teacher at a university that The education learning components are often times kind of mutually independent that they're completely separate and that's they're not actually as packed up as we would want them to be some of this is the history of our educational systems that they're not necessarily geared for learning they're more geared for kind of maybe indoctrination is too strong of a word, but some form of like making a single kind of mass-produced human that has some knowledge and abilities. 

At the end of the day that they represent those knowledge and abilities as part of their diplomas they have a nice little piece of paper that says, hey we went to this place and we learned these sorts of things and we should have gained these these abilities and skills now learning I think as a massively massively different different than this because so much of education especially ways traditional ways of thinking about education is really wrapped up and to what people often called chalk and talk in quotation talk and talk so it's the idea that back when we had blackboards and chalk that people. 

Lecturer would just stand at the front of the room and red on the blackboard and and speak to an audience and that somehow this was learning somehow this was engaging in audience to my new things and acquire new knowledge and in some respects it is there are people who benefit from that form of learning I benefited from that form of learning I loved lectures. 

I still love lectures, but that doesn't mean that everybody benefits from that form of learning and so it's important that we take a multidimensional view that we look at learning and even education from many different perspectives. And one of them and I think it's pretty well fundament to a fundament to the learning process is socialization and play so I always say the learning is a social process and there's ample research to back up this so if you're socializing if you're playing even better then you're you can be learning in that process and so I'm often criticized by my students to say, oh your class is too easy or your classes to I actually have fun in your class and that's not a humble brag or anything like that, that's just literally what some of my students have said some of them. 

Had much more horrible things but let's just focus on these for a moment because it's important that we don't underestimate the value of socialization and the value of play as part of the learning process we are so kind of structured to think that learning has to be a miserable and difficult and problematic and challenging and well challenging is not bad but like, you know, really difficult and arduous arduous there's a good word aren't you as processed? 

It does not and it should not and if we can integrate play if we can integrate socialization into the learning process, then really any everybody starts to benefit. Now I think it's also important that we think about learning not in the strictest sense of okay, I go to school when I come home or even the restrictive sense of oh, I take a bachelor's degree a master's degree or a PhD but we think about learning in the entire life course over the over the entire life course because at any juncture there are ample opportunities to learn and sometimes the learning that we are able to acquire in informal areas of life can be the most valuable I've learned so. 

Much from speaking with my older relatives to having conversations with strangers and the bus.

Listening. I might who can listen so much it's not just about active listening paying attention to what the other person's saying trying to understand what they're saying but I admire people who can listen and take action on the knowledge that the other person's trying to give you or the advice that the other person is trying to give you. 

I struggle a lot with trying to understand which sources of advice guidance understanding. I should pay attention to. In which ones I can kind of just not ignore, but maybe just take with a grain of salt we'll say and maybe we should just take all advice with a grain of salt. 

The challenge I've faced throughout my life is not just this need to pay attention but listening and trying to understand and elicit from that person's input what I can take as an actionable request or an actionable piece of advice and that's where I think listening holds its most value and it's truest form of benefit for all of us is that we don't just listen to understand we don't just listen to hear someone out, although that's very important we should definitely be. 

Doing these things but we're listening to try to take the knowledge and help our own lives and there's two really important instances. I've had in my life where this has really shaped my whole future and I think the first was after I finished my master's degree and I mentioned a previous podcast how I did applying for hundreds and hundreds of jobs and trying to find that position that would take me to the next step and during that period of time a position came up in Norway and Oslo Norway at a research and Institution and the position focused on the accessibility of web technologies for people with disabilities and had a strong social political science component to it and I looked at it once and at the time I wasn't really into these things and so I just kind of blew it off and I saw it advertised again and so I mentioned this to to my partner and I said, hey, what do you think is this something I should but be bothered applying for and she immediately said yes, you should apply for that that is exactly the kind of thing that you want to do that you are interested. 

In and that even realizing that there was the connection between the things in the job posting and my own value systems. I just went ahead and put the application and well a few months later. I was awarded the position. I moved to Norway and changed my whole trajectory of the my career changed my whole life, so listening can really create opportunities for us to advance and to push ourselves into new and uncharted territories. 

Now the other opportunity. I had to listen to others and take their advice was after my first year of teaching. So at my first class I was terrified. I had hundreds of students in front of me and they're all looking to me for their future of the academic knowledge and all the things that they will gain from university and I'm sitting there having had one week to prepare for this class and I'm trying to get up the courage to actually not just impress them, but to actually connect with them and to make sure. 

That they're learning what they need to learn in order to take their academic and professional careers forward. Now, there is a young student in the front row listening intently the whole class and after class she came up to me and she had a list of things for me to take on as input as feedback as advice as guidance and that it was all because at the end of class I said, hey if anybody has any feedback for me, or if you know wanted to give me an even advice I did love to hear and so she came up with this wonderful list and it first was. 

Really intimidating it was really scary because here's this student first semester and here's me a professor and we're trying to kind of understand our roles and I asked her to religious why don't we go back to my office and then you can tell me everything.

All right. I've been wanting to record this one for some time because gratitude is one of these ideas that I really care about it's it's that form of sincere praise that I think matters so much in our daily lives we we love get we love receiving it but we're often too hesitant to give it to others and so I'm gonna start this podcast by saying thank you to everyone who has listened to this podcast over the last few weeks this venture started us something. 

Almost by whim flimsy and it has grown to something rather incredible for from my perspective. I mean, I'm a academic so my expectations of anything. I produce is fairly low low low threshold, you know, I'll be lucky if a friend or a family member reads one of my academic articles, but to be able to start a podcast and see such quick uptake from people around the world and I do mean around the world it feels so validating and I feel so encouraged that the work. 

That I'm doing actually matters to people and it resonates on some level and with any research you're always kind of in a very deep kind of niche and narrow topic and so the fear is always that oh I've spent my life looking at this tiny minuscule idea and that oh it has no bearing or no no interest outside of me and maybe a few of my colleagues to see and to hear from you your feedback you're encouragement and your care has been honestly over. 

Whelming for me so I just want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you for taking the time for the engagement and the attention. I think these are some of the scarcest resources that we have our time and our attention and you're given that to me in such a generous and kind way and so I just want to sincerely sincerely express my appreciation and I want to encourage everyone to please take the time to express your gratefulness to others and it doesn't have to be some. 

Huge magnanimous gesture of oh thank you for changing my life, it can simply be a thank you for helping me out thanks for holding the door for me thanks for yeah giving up your seat for me or thank you for taking the time to prepare me a meal, thank you for taking the time to suggest a recipe now. 

I'm on a food kick so this is just a tangent. I think we all know how important that the that gratitude and, Sincere appreciation is but we often reserve that for really big gestures and so I I want to just encourage everyone for the people that you care about for the ones you're close to just remind them how much you appreciate their presence in your life that can be a partner a sibling co-worker parent child, it doesn't matter just give them a little reminder that they're a person in your life and that their presence matters to you and take and, Extra step and go beyond just a simple thank you and really find a way to locate your gratitude in that person's actions, so thank you for being such a good parent my whole life and acknowledge that they've given sacrifices to ensure that you've had a good life or thank you to a co-worker for the work that they've done that's helped you advance in your career. 

I think all of these has expressions appreciation can be incredibly important and just having that. Sense of acknowledgement can really feel great and help us through some difficult times together.

Have been playing with this idea lately of micro-compassion. Now, I think most people by now are familiar with the term micro-aggression. If you're not microaggressions are just those little passive-aggressive things we do to each other sometimes that just tries to pack at someone's self-esteem or someone's someone's it integrity even. 

It's just a little things that we might do to diminish or demean those around us and we're all fallible. We all kind of fall into this trap sometimes of. Somebody being in our life that have maybe caused us harm or has hurt us in some way and so we bite back we try to hurt them. 

Micro compassion is kind of the opposite of a microaggression Michael compassion in in my view is really an effort to make someone's life or their day a little bit better. So it could simply be a compliment to someone for what they've done for a job well done or for something that very clearly they are taking pride in maybe it's a, Something they've taken pride in their accomplishment or the way they address where they have appear but it's taking that and acknowledging those efforts and acknowledging and giving some validation to that person. 

I mean, that's what we can think of as a micro-compassion. So it could be going to have a coffee and and the if the person serving your coffee seems like they're having a glum day. Just giving them a little bit of encouragement asking them, you know, as your shift getting over soon. 

Has it been? Really busy today and just seeing if you can give them a little bit of a little bit of a kind of a pepper a little bit of a happy thought. And so I think what we have to do is as stop going about our lives as just drones that are kind of making it through your day and finding things that you're going to do that are inward focused but look a little bit more outside of ourselves and not trying to dramatically change someone's life. 

You're not trying to save them. You're just trying to give them a little bit of a bright spot. In the course of their day and I think validating something they've done looking at them and giving them a compliment on what they've been able to accomplish. That's a really incredible thing even if it is just someone who's made you a good cup of coffee. 

Tell them thank you. That's an awesome cup of coffee. I really appreciate you taking the time to make it as good as you can. And you'd be amazed at how many relationships can emerge just from those few moments that you take to really sincerely complement somebody's attitude or behavior. 

This can really go a long way to see. Ing new friendships new relationships and and making your your life even better.

Motivation is one of those things that can be very hard to harness effectively. I think we all struggle at times to find that excitement to do some things that are necessary for our work or our life without dreading them too much and was trying to find I guess the time and space to maybe if not enjoy those processes at least try to get them done and so I think often of motivation and, Two terms external motivation so motivation that's driven by external forces so that could be things like approval of someone like your boss for example external motivation can be things like money so I want to do something because I want to make money external motivation can come from kind of social pressure so I want to do something because my family wants me to do it because my friends want me to do it that's kind of that peer pressure idea, but I think the most valuable motivation that you can cultivate.

And I do think you can cultivate this is internal motivation that inward drive that fire that excitement that passion that love for something that you want to do and that will really get you through some of the toughest most laborious parts of whatever and ever whatever goal is that you have in order to achieve that goal or that end.

So it really just comes down to individual choice. I think motivation is driven by choice whether we like to acknowledge that or not, our motivations are our chosen by us or are the work that we do is chosen by us so we can choose to do something out of an object a sense of obligation we can choose to do something because of some external reward or we can also choose to do something more actively with a little bit more agency and autonomy we can choose something because I want to do that even if it's something we really don't like, To do it just helps reframe what you're doing so that it doesn't seem like it's something coming from the outside but something coming from the inside now.

I'm not so much a fool to believe that everything you do is somehow gonna be driven by internal motivation, but if you find yourself in a position where the external drivers these external forces are pushing you to do something that you just don't want to do and you have the, Freedom or the autonomy or the agency to actually make a choice that doesn't impact your livelihood or your well-being then it you can suddenly start to flip the script on some of these obligations and you can start thinking of them less as I have to do this and more as I choose to do this because I want to do this and if you can't find what that want is maybe it's time to let let it go, maybe it's time to let that feeling of obligation leave you.

I, When it's finding that internal internal motivation when you found that excitement, I think that can really help guide you along life's path it can really make help you make hard decisions whether that's choosing what to focus on and college whether that's a choosing what job to take if you have multiple offers, but that's choose to move somewhere date someone or just to have something for breakfast lunch or dinner.

I think that excitement that sense of fun can really be a guiding light. And so I always encourage my students and the people around me to pursue that passion pursue that love pursue that sense of joy and wonder because that can lead you to the the a place where your internal motivation comes naturally.

There are no right or wrong answers when it comes to motivation it's just about how you frame those decisions so find that guiding light find that joy in that excitement pursue those paths and when you look back make sure you're framing those decisions in ways that showcase the benefits of what you've done.

In business there's this idea of a pivot which is basically a strategic redirection of where you want your business to go and I really enjoy this concept because it's not simply a we're gonna throw everything out and try again, it's basically just a we made a mistake we assessed the situation and we've realized that we have to go into a different direction and using that information to learn and to move into a different direction. I think this is so valuable especially for entrepreneurs and for anyone. Who's involved and the business community to really take on this idea of a pivot as a unique up opportunity and example of to put it in other words failure. I think this is such a great way of looking at failure because it embeds the learning opportunity in the action itself, so if you're gonna pivot your business from one business model to another then you're learning from a failed business model and it may not be that the entire business model was a failure there. May just have been one component of it that was just not ready maybe there was a technology that hadn't been developed that is too far it's too much of a reach to wait for that technology to be developed maybe the market you thought was there wasn't as large as you expected and so you're not able to scale really effectively maybe there's a whole host of external factors regulations that could come into play that could limit the impact of that business model and so rather than sticking with a business model that may be destined for failure. You take the decision to learn from that experience and move into a new and different direction and so what I would love to see more of out in the world is entrepreneurs pitching their failures. I would like to see them pitching their pivots if I could imagine a group of entrepreneurs telling me about their businesses and their business models. I wouldn't want to hear how successful they expect themselves to be what I would want to hear is how unsuccessful they have been that will. Give me a much truer test of them as individuals their resilience but also their ability to kind of think on their feet and to move into new directions where they think the markets are available and where they think there are new business opportunities social impact opportunities. I think that speaks volumes to the maturity of an entrepreneur and the maturity of an innovator when they can stop thinking about their work in one dimension as being about one single ambitious aim and start thinking about their work more holistically and that while they may. Still retain that ultimate why why they exist stays the same they may adjust their how they may adjust how they go about making money how they go about impacting society or they may address what they actually do, so opening up a new service line opening up a new product line closing down a service or product line, it's so easy to get entrenched into a single way of thinking about the work that we do it becomes extremely hard and challenging to change that way of thinking and to move into a different direct. It takes so much courage and bravery and it also takes insight and intuition to be able to make those changes effectively. And that's why fundamentally a pivot is about strategic redirection being able to think strategically. So in my work I want to see more entrepreneurs pitching their failures and less entrepreneurs pitching their hope for success.

Okay, I want to talk about emotional expression for a little bit. This particular episode came about because one of the listeners Maria suggested that I go into a little bit more detail about how to develop a kind of vocabulary of emotions. And so I have been reflecting on this quite a bit because I haven't always had the best vocabulary for emotions and I've only really just begun to kind of develop more in. Sights or more kind of in-depth insights into my own kind of emotional state of mind and that sort of thing. So I think just to start off with what we need is just a basic vocabulary. And some of these are going to seem obvious but I think another sense it's not always obvious for all of us, especially depending on you know, your background and your own personal experience of how emotions were handled maybe in your home or in your family life. So if we just start off with and talk about some basic emotions things like joy excitement anything sad angry disgust, you know, fear fears always a big one. I think people often mistake fear for another emotion, but if you really kind of go down into it, whatever your state of mind might be there's kind of fears that the core of some of these some of these feelings and experiences we have. So I think the first step is just to have a basic vocabulary a basic kind of dictionary for your feelings. And when I first started trying to reflect on my feelings, I would refer to just a list of feelings in a book and so it was really helpful when I was having conversations to look at that list and to try to identify especially if I was having difficult conversations or conversations ahead any sense of conflict in them. I would just try to look at that list of feelings and say where do I place on this list? Where is My kind of emotional state right now. But it also you have to kind of go through a an initial step before you can even get to that point and that is to kind of get away from thinking about your feelings as someone else's property or responsibility and it has you need to have to get away from thinking about feelings as a state of embodiment. So it's um, sometimes easy to fall into a trap when, You're feeling angry or upset to kind of misdiagnose your feelings and think more in terms of the bodily state so you might be breathing really hard your heart might be racing your mind might be racing your shoulders might be tense and so you might say something like I'm tense not realizing that the tension is something that you might be carrying physically and not necessarily emotionally because there's emotional tension as well, but I think I'll, Have. What people live that people might misdiagnose themselves. So I think it's really important that we develop that vocabulary and that we divorce our feelings from our physical state we separate these two elements and we separate them from what other people are doing. So to say like, I feel that you shouldn't do this or I feel that you're making me this those are your your misattributing your feelings to someone else's actions or activities. And that's not to say that that your context your, Relational context can't inspire feeling certainly when I have conversations with people I might feel excited because of what I hear them say but it's it's a you always want to make sure that you're owning those feelings that you're kind of understanding where they're coming from and what they are. So I think to start off with I would just try to separate my mind in terms of what other people do and how I feel and what I, Physically experience and how I feel and from there you can develop a vocabulary of feelings by looking at just a list and at different periods of the day just describing what it is that you're feeling right then it may be boredom. It may be a tiredness. It may be stress. This dress is again as one of those that could be a physical manifestation of a feeling as well as a feeling in itself.

One of the things I find very interesting about society is our need to create dichotomies where there really aren't any and I'm not sure where any of this came about but there's kind of been a lot of. Polarity that has emerged whether it's media or anywhere else in in my lifetime at least and so I find it really interesting to explore this idea that there are no kind of dichotomies where there are no polar polar opposites that an effect everything is more or less a spectrum this is particularly interesting when we talk about society because the easiest thing is to just classify things as good or bad right or wrong in or out, you know up or down and, Not to recognize the inherent complexity of social life and when we do this it's it's easy to get trapped into this idea that there is no gray everything is black or white and we stop looking for the right questions to ask because we're only given a very limited set of answers or of of ideas or framework within to within which we can work. So I think it's going to be more more important as a society continues to develop for us to stop thinking in black and white terms that's to stop thinking in positive or negative terms and even in good or bad terms and start thinking about all aspects of life as just a spectrum of gray we're taught at a very young age even that there is a right or wrong answer to just about any question we could ask and this is kind of a failing of the educational system. S because that's not reality it's simplifies things certainly and for a child more or less makes sense for them to see where the world and more simplistic form but it really sets people up for a huge challenge when they become adults because the right and the wrong of daily life is much more complicated as much more difficult to discern. And that's not to say that there aren't clearly right and clearly wrong decisions to make or ways of behaving but it is to point out that the clarity within which things could be right or wrong is much much much rarer than we would expect growing up in a country where you learn you know that there's one answer to a question whenever you're coming up into school, it also sets people up for a real challenge when they hit higher education. Because if you working within a higher education institution that that really challenges students to think critically then what you're faced with as a student is the proposition that there is no right or wrong answer that there's only a spectrum of gray and there are more right answers and there are more wrong answers but the middle bit is very vague and indistinct and difficult to discern in this of course challenges a whole bunch of other structures within the educational system not least being grading and evaluate. Students learning outcomes but the basic premise here is that we have to stop thinking of things in terms of black and white that there's a whole complex array of of changes that can occur that we have to recognize aren't simply good or bad black or white but that there is a range of options opportunities that we have in front of us in evaluating the good or the, Bad of it all can only ever be done in retrospect it's very difficult to make a decision in your life and to know ahead of time that that's going to be a good or a bad decision it's really about how you frame that decision in your and and afterwards and try to understand what was the outcomes of that decision before you can really make that normative good or bad evaluation of it, so I think in terms of the world that we're facing now the complex challenges that we're facing. I think it's good if we understand and recognize that we're not going to always make the most optimized decisions and that the decisions we do make are going to be influenced by how we frame those decisions and how we feel about those decisions and not necessarily by some kind of objective measure of right or wrong and it's important to remember that all dichotomies are false

Failure is probably one of the most important learning opportunities any of us can experience throughout our life and failures often go uncelebrated they go on recognized because we kind of just want to move through failure because it's painful or because we start to doubt ourselves we doubt the choices that we've made but it's incredibly important that we take failure not as an exhibition of our fault or our or self-blame but really look at failure as a. Chance to thrive and a chance to move into a new direction that can potentially bring even greater benefit and greater progress, whether it's professionally or personally in our lives and so I think we should re-retrain ourselves when we think about failure and stop looking at it as a point of shame, but look at it as a point of honor look at it as a badge of courage and as something that you can hold up as a opportunity that you've experienced to improve yourself and so I,Think we we should really look at even creating CVs even creating kind of a highlight reels of our failures throughout our life whether that's personal failures and relationships or professional failures. I think it's really important that we examine those failures critically reflect on them and don't hold them to heart they are not they don't define us they don't define who we are they're simply a milestone in our life that gave us a new chance.To move into a different direction to move into a new direction and hopefully to learn and improve upon the work that we've already been doing. And this concludes again both professional as well as personal failure so professional failure can be anything from submitting a job application and not getting an interview getting an interview and not getting the job and even getting the job but not necessarily performing up to your expectation or even the expectation of your supervisor now this is not to excuse failure, this is simply to point out that the our perceived failures are often not perceived by others as being failures, but just as being learning experiences and I think we can adopt that same mind. Set and rather than harshly criticize ourselves look at that look at that chance for taking what you've done and moving forward and not being satisfied with second best but really identifying the major flaws and the deficiencies and what we've done and being able to move forward from that and you can reflect on that any point in time in your life because sometimes failures kind of go by unnoticed you you do something you try it out and,That. Not really working so you just go on to the next thing you immediately try something different and that's great that's an important part of the process but then if you've done that for 10 15 20 years in your career, I think it's very important when you have these junctures in your life for self-reflection to think about those failures, what was it that led you down that path and have you kind of learned their lesson here because ultimately a lesson is repeated until it's learned.

One of my greatest failures came right after I finished my master's degree. I was looking for a job internationally because I wanted to gain some international experience and I was growing tired of the work that I was doing where I was living in the US and it was a really important juncture in my life because I had up until then been impatient with my career progress and I've always been pushing the envelope trying to figure out what's the next step what's the,Next step and just taking any opportunity that came towards me that I thought might be remotely interesting for me or from my work and so it was a unique period of my life because I pushed myself to try to achieve something that was almost insurmountable and I needed to exercise persistence and patience and this was not something that came naturally to me, it was something that I had up until then just avoided completely if it didn't come easy to me. I just kind of went and did something. Else so I think this is was important because what it taught me essentially and this is after hundreds of job applications all over the world and spending an incredible amount of time not only reviewing different job applications or job descriptions, but even looking at different immigration policies for different countries trying to understand culturally socially language-wise, what would be a good fit trying to find areas of the world where I could see not only my career prospering. But finding different things that were interesting for me and that I had a passion for and that I cared about.And this was so incredibly important because during this period of intense kind of trial and error really during this intense period of rejection constant rejection every week getting a new reply from from a company saying no, we're not interested in you or we've given the position to someone else or on the very few occasions where I was interviewed and then coming in second third or fourth place in that interview throughout this time. I was getting offers from companies in the United States, that would have been. So easy for me to accept and they were offers that were enticing and interesting and and were engaging for me but I really wanted to push myself to go beyond just what was immediately available to me and try to find something that really mattered to me and so in doing that. I faced failure after failure after failure. I got rejected hundreds of times. I think the grand total of applications that I had put in was around 250, maybe even.Applications of those I got five ten interviews and this went on for the course of almost nine months so it was a I was facing rejection on such a regular basis that it no longer became scary and no longer became intimidating it just became part of the experience of looking for a job and it didn't rob me it didn't rob the joy of getting an interview it never robbed me of the joy of getting a job offer it just desensitized me. To the self-destructive behaviors that always come in the face of rejection that doubt that self-doubt of oh, I'm just not good enough, oh they don't they didn't think I was a good fit for this position today didn't think that I was a right for this position, you know, these these narratives that we craft around our experiences and especially our failures are so self-defeating and so we have to stop thinking about a failure as as being just a no failures can just be not yet and,Of all those applications 200 250 applications. I got 249 not yet, but then I got the one yes and that yes changed my life so as you're going through your professional careers as we all go through our professional careers, it's so important that we face failure head-on and we accept it for what it is not only a learning opportunity, but we find ways of moving past it and not letting it destroy our self-confidence, but just continuing just moving. Forward because the yes will always be joyful, but we can change our framework our frame of reference we can change t