Original subtitles

[PIANO]

Why is self-awareness key to relational life?

Because it's so obvious that it's almost difficult

to define it sometimes.

Because self-awareness involves, first of

all, the idea that you can look at yourself

and how you are acting and reacting in relationships, how

you are communicating in a relationship, how

you are showing up, or how you are not and avoiding.

That piece of self-knowledge is also

what gives you a sense of looking at others

and being able to understand them.

The question often is, do you need to understand yourself

in order to understand others.

And my answer is yes.

[PIANO]

When you enter a relationship-- any relationship--

you bring with you an entire history about relationships.

Instead of just bringing our official résumé where we have

all the places where we have studied and where we have

worked, we also all have an alternative résumé that tells

the story of all the other lessons of life.

There are other experiences that we have accumulated.

But they are not usually put on a professional résumé

because they're not perceived as relevant to the job.

But in fact, they are the résumé that we bring with us equally

every day when we walk into the office.

And that alternative résumé is, in part, the relational résumé.

What have been our experiences, our expectations

about relationships, the messages

that we received about how central relationships are

or not.

And that whole history shows up.

And it will influence the way we communicate,

the way we relate, the way we deal with conflict,

the way we develop trust, the way we establish boundaries.

Some of the major aspects of relationships are all embedded

in this alternative résumé that we bring.

Now, go to your Class Guide and find the section on alternative

résumés because you're about to start building your own.

There you can record your answers to the questions

that I'll be asking you throughout this lesson.

Questions such as, what are some key markers

of your family history?

Do you tend to seek more security and connection,

or do you lean more toward freedom and independence?

Were you raised more for autonomy and self-reliance

or more so for loyalty and interdependence?

What are some of your expectations in relationships?

And what stories are you telling about yourself?

And what do these stories reveal?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I've always thought that when we talk

about relational intelligence, the most important way to start

is to understand what is a vocabulary, what

are the associations, the places where you need to go and look

for information, in order to develop

that kind of relational self-awareness.

To go to history, to go intergenerationally,

to look at cultural transitions, is

extremely useful for understanding

how relational thinking and values evolve

in a particular family, context, or culture.

Your parents, born here or born abroad or one

of each, what brought them?

Did they come alone, or did they come with family or community?

What changed in the way people communicated to each other?

And most importantly, what changed in arriving here,

in terms of the importance of the self?

Relationships in your family life growing up,

were they central or were they peripheral, as you see it?

And the words are voluntarily undefined so

that people can make their own immediate associations.

What made it central?

Central how?

Peripheral how?

What made them less central?

Was it that people just never really talked

about it much, that nobody really visited this house much,

that there were not really many friends for the parents

or for the children?

Everyone understands the open door

versus the more closed door.

People coming in, being invited in,

versus a certain kind of reserve around the family.

But that has a direct implication for relationships

as well.

So you can ask yourself.

if you look at your parents and how they related to each other,

to their elders, to their community,

how would you describe it?

If you look at your grandparents and how

they relate to their community, to their elders,

to the authorities around them, how did that express itself?

And what shifted?

What changed, in terms of number of children,

in terms of authority, in terms of gender roles,

in terms of nuclearity of the family versus broader

extended family?

A very good example for looking at how relationships change

is the place of the child in the family.

Intergenerationally, I mean, everybody

has heard their parents say, I would never

have talked like this to my parents.

Why?

Because the place of the child was different.

Because the relationship between parent and child was different.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Take some time to pause now and reflect.

So looking historically gives you a mapping, a gradation

to highlight shifts and to hone in on specificities

of relational thinking.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Most of us will either think we grew up

with too much of something or too little of something.

We grew up with too much attention, too much intrusion,

sometimes, sadly, too much violation.

And others may say, I grew up with too much neglect,

abandonment, aloneness.

Everybody has two fundamental sets of human needs.

We all need security, and safety, and stability,

and predictability.

And we all also need freedom, and adventure, and the ability

to experience change, and risk, and novelty, and surprise.

Everybody wants connection, and everybody needs separateness.

And many of us will come out of our childhoods, some

of us wanting more connection, more protection, more

togetherness, and some of us needing more space, more

freedom, and more individuality.

Would you say, coming out of your childhood,

that you were more in need of connection and protection,

or would you say that you were more

in need of freedom and individuality?

And then, when you look at that, how

did that influence the choices that you made?

And how does it, in particular, shape the way

that you react in certain situations?

Not liking to be told what to do, or yearning to be

told what to do.

Wanting to be left to do it yourself,

or wondering why you are left to be doing it yourself.

And onward like that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I think one of the beautiful questions of the unofficial

résumé, when it pertains to relationships, is this one.

Were you raised for autonomy, or were you raised for loyalty?

Meaning, were you primarily educated

with the idea that self-reliance is central,

that you've got your own legs to stand on, that nobody will ever

know as well as you what it is that you should do,

that if you have a challenge or a problem,

you should deal with it yourself.

People get the story.

They understand the messaging that goes behind it.

And sometimes you are raised for autonomy

because it's part of a cultural legacy.

But sometimes it's simply the outcome

of neglect and aloneness.

It's not always just coming out of a vision

for life and a worldview.

Similarly, were you raised for interdependence and loyalty?

Relationships matter.

People are there for you, and you are there for them.

You owe them.

Duty is more important than just if you like it

or if it suits you.

We have a sense of obligation towards others,

and they have it towards us.

So your goal is less towards autonomy and independence.

Your goal is more toward integration and belonging.

Now, they're not either-or.

We all have both of these fundamental human needs.

But many of us have a sense as to what was the loudest

volume that we heard.

And then, you may say, I changed.

I didn't stay the way I grew up.

But those are two orientations towards relational foundation

that I think is a very good entry point for many of us

as we start to think about our relational self-awareness.

Would you say that you were raised more so with a focus

towards autonomy or loyalty?

And then, write just yourself, underneath,

what leads you to this conclusion?

What were some of the messages, the experiences, the values,

attitudes, beliefs that supported this orientation?

How you ask for help, how you compete,

how you tell people when you struggle, or not, et cetera.

These are all part of these two portals.

There is no right and wrong.

These are just reflections about ourselves,

about a certain focus, a certain orientation

towards relationship, that will be very helpful in knowing more

about your own relational self-awareness.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When you enter a relationship, you bring with you

your history of being in a relationship

and what you were told about being in relationships.

When you look at yourself entering into a relationship,

you imagine yourself literally entering a house, a place,

that you can call the relationship.

What's the mood with which you enter?

What is the set of expectations with which you enter?

And do they vary?

Or do you notice that they often are the same, regardless

of where you go and who you meet?

Do you anticipate that people will

want to hear what you have to say,

or do you anticipate that is not the case?

Are you more of a listener, and you figure out where you are?

And then, once you've understood the geography,

then you allow yourself to come in?

Or would you say that you're more someone who first goes in

and then, when you stumble and you knock yourself

a few times, then you suddenly wonder,

oh, maybe I should look where I am.

And then you figure out what is the geography here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From the moment you come into this world,

we evolve, we change, we experience conflict, crisis,

new development, transitions.

And all of these every time bring us back

to rethink about how we engage with relationships.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In talking about self-awareness, there

is the implication of know thyself.

And so, many of us will think, I know myself, I know my story.

But sometimes the stories that we tell about ourselves also

have the risk of becoming rigid, repetitious, narrow,

reductionistic.

And they actually become a truth in and of themselves

just because we keep telling them.

But that doesn't mean that it's the only story that

exists about us.

So when you look at your own relational self-awareness,

watch out not to fall into the trap of constricting narratives

about yourselves, about your relationships,

about others, that don't allow you

for actual relational self-awareness.

Questions that I love to ask you, in this regard, are this--

what is a story that I have told one too

many times about myself?

And maybe what is a story that I should let go of?

And another question would be, what

is a part of myself that I need to break up with?

And sometimes, you will notice that a part of yourself

that you need to break up with is a belief about yourself.

And that belief is wrapped into a story.

And therefore, stories, beliefs, constrictions

are some of the main things that hamper

a more fluid, a more evolving experience of self-awareness.

You now have the foundation for your own alternative résumé.

And that's a foundational piece in the building blocks

of relational intelligence.

It broadens your understanding of yourself.

It broadens your understanding of how you interact with others

and how others interact with you.

It broadens your understanding of what

may be some of the challenges that you

bring to your relationships.

And it broadens your understanding

of what may be your strengths, which you don't necessarily

value.

Because for many of us, the things that come easy,

we just take for granted.

As you continue through this class,

you may discover more about yourself that you would like

to add to your alternative résumé.

So be ready to take notes.

And let's dig in.