Power of Unity - Dr. Becky Bailey - "Becoming the Best You Can Be" Webinar Series

0:31 Welcome to Conscious Discipline and our time together. Conscious Discipline is a comprehensive social and emotional disciplined program that you can see on the screen. Look at the screen, you can see it's comprehensive by the pyramid, it starts at the bottom, watch at the bottom, it's based on brain research in it's based on brain research for two reasons, one, it helps us see the relationship between brain behavior and between the brain in our behavior and something very very profound it allows us to look at the strategies we used to discipline children in a new light, often we think "Well what can I do to get him to bed?" to "Well what can I do to get them to finish their homework?"

1:20 "What could get them to do uh... to be more compliant?" And we think there's some trick or strategy. There's some quick thing we can do, but the brain research shows us that how we discipline children, how we respond to their non-compliance, how we respond to their upset, to their conflicts. Conflict has a profound impact on them for the rest of their life, an essence it decides, determines, influences, influences who they are and who they will become.

1:53 In Conscious Discipline we focus on the adults first and children second, we do this because we're the models, we're the teachers and if we lack skills so do they... so will they. The seven powers for conscious adults is the focus of this webinar series. Okay, now last time we focused on the power of perception. So we focused on the power of perception, that said if you want permanent behavior change, you must have perceptual shifts and that is huge because in Conscious Discipline we want permanent behavior changes.

2:30 So read these two things with me, so you'll look at them on the screen. And it says, "Behavior management systems that merely manipulate the surface behavior of children will never build deep values and internal controls." And then a quote from me, "Discipline is not something you do to children it is something you develop within them." It says "...something your develop..." but it's "...something you develop within them..." Okay, so the big this is then, how do we create this permanent behavior change, that's what we're after, we're after constantly after permanent behavior change.

3:07 Not putting out little fires, and doing quick fixes, so what it is, is we how we have to come and ponder some very, very deep questions, and... So these deep questions are, who do we believe we are, and how do we believe the world is? And you might say, the world does this have to do with discipline? But these are profound questions that as you see we work through the session today, you gonna see have huge impacts on the classroom. Okay so how we see ourselves, how we see the world creates the world we live in. Okay so I'm gonna tell you a story so some of you might have heard this story so, two people are moving to a new city and they walk down and they run into this wise man and they ask... the first person asks the wise man, says "You know what's the city like up ahead, how's it going to be for me?" And the guy says, "Well, how was the city where you just came from?" And the person said, "Aw. The people were mean, they were nasty, they were horrible." And the guy goes. "Aw.

4:08 That's how it will be up there too." And the second person goes up to the same wise man and says "I'm moving up to the city also how will be that... how will that city be for me, how is that city that I am moving to?" He says, "Well, how was it from where you came?" "Well, it was, the people were wonderful, they were kind, it was a loving, caring community." And he says "That's how it will be up at your next city also." So we carry these beliefs with us and we create our world from them. Now today we're talking about the power unity and that basically says that we're all in this together. Now what I want you to do is I want you to ponder this, I want you to think about this.

4:52 There's seven billion of us living on the planet, do you believe the seven billion people are separate people, like we would imagine billiard balls, so do you think we're a bunch of billiard balls, so we're all separate individualistic, individuals like billiard balls and we impact each other every now and then, when bump into each other. Or do you believe that we are somehow interconnected with each other and our planet, influencing each other in the subtle yet powerful ways.

5:27 How you answer this will have a powerful impact on how to use raise your children and how you set up your classroom. Now Conscious Discipline believes in the power of unity, that we're all in this together and it talks about or it's a belief that means we literally somehow all interconnected we don't know how this mysterious force works it may be something like gravity, electricity, but somehow we're all this same sense of... of quantum energy together.

6:02 Now, how do we know this true? Well, we don't, so you can do it three ways, so how do we know this to be true that we're literally interconnected. Well one way is through our personal examples, so if you can think about um... these freaky moments you have, I don't know if you all have had freaky moments like me, you know the... the phone will ring you go "That's my sister." you know right off the bat that's your sister or you're thinking about someone and they call you or you've had these moments where...

6:35 you're just sitting at a traffic light and you just know someone is staring at you. and you turn your head an they staring at you and low and behold they are staring at you. So we've all had those moments that we would call unusual and freaky but yet they're common amongst us all on the planet. We've also seen like to seeing on your screen now is the fascination in nature where we see these flocks of birds.

6:57 That somehow change directions and maneuver almost simultaneously, or you'll see, and I've done this myself because I love to scuba dive, but you'll see this while your down in the ocean, you'll go up to a school of fish soon as you move toward them all of them skirt instantly as if they somehow communicate on a very very deep level to shift directions. Or let's say that you're not going to go on these personal experiences of yours, you want something a little more hard-core to prove that we're connected.

7:27 You might rely on the on the scientific community so those of you who are more scientific about this just Google yourselves crazy, because I'll give you a little bit of information you can just go and look it up. So the University Arizona, they're doing research on global consciousness. At Princeton University they're doing the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, which is par and they just... could discern when big events happened in the world like 9-11, so I encourage you to go look at that.

7:58 You can go to International Institute of Biophysics, Cambridge University, Institute of Noetic Sciences, HeartMath, and they'll all talk about the research they're doing on intention, even to the smallest thing about how we cut tomato that made it right before we cut it goes, "Ahhh!" and its energy changes because it knows somehow the knife is coming. So if that is what kinda blows your skirt up, you go look at the scientific community. Some of you though however will try another avenue and it might be through the research community.

8:30 I mean through the religious community, this is the golden rule in 13 religions, actually there's not a religion that is not have a version of the golden rule so the next screen will show you some of these you'll see it, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, so I love Christianity, we know that one, do onto others as we would have them do onto you. Uh... Judaism, what is hateful to you do not do your neighbor, and it goes onto the next page, and you can see even native spirituality we are as much alive as we keep the Earth alive.

9:07 It goes on and on, all our religions have the same thing, somehow every religious group came up with the same principle that we must treat each other as we would want to be treated and there's something underneath that that's so profound that everyone wants to obtain that lofty value. Okay, so. Whatever you believe.

9:39 Whatever you believe about our level of connection we have non-questionable research that states the essential impulse all life is a will to connect. We have this deep connection rather than competition is that... is our most a humane quality. Often we think that I, you know when I talk about making schools that are based on cooperative classrooms like school family, people go, "Aw, but what about competition?

10:15 We need competition, competition is what our society is about and if we don't prepare kids to compete they'll not make it in the world." But if you look at the research, is not competition which keeps us in optimal functioning states it is connection. And we have an innate preference to choose cooperation, children as young as four and five months of age pick, in research, little cooperative bears over non-cooperative bears, we have an innate preference for democracy. They used to believe that these two big old elks would fight it out, you used to have two male elks and they would blow it out, and the one who wins gets to boss around the whole herd of elk.

11:06 Well that's not the truth uh... what happens, how you make a decision in any mammal that works in herd, 51 percent of those mammals think it's a wise choice all other animals follow that group decision and that male elk is sitting there going, "Oh my goodness, they've left me, left me." So we have this innate desire to care to be empathic, to bond. Now I went to Africa this year and if you look at these guys, this is a a picture of some young boys who've just become warriors and gone through a ritual of circumcision, and in this ritual you can see, they're...

11:52 they're quite old, but pretty much what they've got to do is they've got to lay still, with no anesthesia and in front of their whole tribe and they can't make a sound and they can't fight nor can they cry while they get circumcised, and if they do that they need to be a warrior if they pull away or jerk or cry or even a tear in their eye they're shunned for life from their tribe. So as you can see these boys made it, so yay for them.

12:26 um... Just the thought of it makes me wanna faint. But.. um... what it shows us is what research says is that um... rejection hurts and ostracisation... ostracisation... shunning, we'll just use that word, it's easier for me, will destroy you. So if you look at this next slide, what we found out is that the brain areas activated by physical pain are almost identical to the pain areas on social pain.

12:59 So when you see that commercial on TV that says "Where does depression hurt?" And it goes "Everywhere." it's true. Rejection physically hurts the body, it's the same pathways, and I'm not a doctor so don't anyone believe what I'm just about to say but the research does show that if you get kicked to the curb by a loved one you can take a Tylenol and feel slightly better. So we know that the drugs that help physical pain also help social pain. Now it used to be that we thought that kids with... with high self-esteem everybody remembers this, let's tell 'em how great they are. We still believe that children with high self-esteem had good psychological health and the kids who had low self-esteem have... had, you know anxiety and depression and other psychological problems.

13:54 And then they did research and I found these kids in games were having high self-esteem and couldn't figure this all out. Well it turns out it's not about self-esteem at all, it's about the underlying construct that self-esteem represents, which is the state social connectedness so kids who were connected have psychological well-being, kids who or not connected have deep, deep pain and we've seen that with school shooters. Ostracize children, what happens is once you get rejected the pain system comes on in your body, once the pain system comes on it shuts down that the higher centers of your brain, so you can no longer can make healthy choices, and in that locked-in state without any ability to self-regulate, that pain becomes so great and you end up in an aggressive state where you either commit suicide or you kill those around you. Also at the University of Exeter, this is in Britain they found the most important predictor of health, greater than diet and exercise is the number of groups which you belong and the number of strong relationships you have, so for those people who are too busy to connect in the holiday season you best just put down the wrapping paper and go talk to a friend. Okay, so...

15:15 what does all of this mean? So we've gone around the Power of Unity and I'm just giving you different bits and pieces, so what does this all come down to? Well, it comes down to how we're going to create our classrooms, we're gonna... how to we help these children, there's a whole research study that said touching a teddy bear mitigates the negative effects of social exclusion, in other words just hugging a bear that power of touch, if you can't get it from an animal or human just try a stuffed animal and that will help soothe you.

15:49 We do Conscious Discipline in high school, one brave souled teacher used a teddy bear, brought in a teddy bear, actually it was the mascot of the school, but it was still a teddy bear, and when she'd see these kids in a deep funk or especially the ones that had been excluded, that outgroup, so to speak, she would just take the bear, it could be an algebra class, could be an english class, could be a science class, and she'd just take the bear and just toss it around the classroom, as soon as they caught the bear their body would change they would relax and they could get back to work and research supports this, that, so if you have a child who has...

16:26 is not someone's friend in class it's time for us to reach out to them but we can't reach immediately give 'em a teddy bear, we'll start from there. Alright, so, what I'm coming down to then is what does this mean in actuality in our classrooms? Okay, so if you were a billiard ball person, if you think we're separate individuals then, which is what we're raised with in our Western culture, that we're individuals, we need to be rugged individuals and you know 'what I do is my business' and 'you get out my business' and you know 'I'm not messing with you' 'don't you tell me what to do' and all that rugged individualism.

17:10 The focus when you believe you're separate from other people is I'm getting. So I have to get my needs met. How do I get enough? How do I get you to like me? How to I get you to appreciate me? How do I get you to compliment me? And so all our little helpful things kinda, if you really were honest and ripped 'em back, it's really about getting. And even if you look at politics, 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine.'

17:38 So it's not really a giving to you, I'm doing nice to you, because I want to get you to be nice back to me. Now what happens when we do all this getting? So who gets to get the most? Well, the best. So if you're the best at something you get the most. So if you're the best at school, you get to be student of the week, you get to be line-leader, if you just sit quietly all day you get to go to the water fountain first! So the best people get stuff and then the ones who aren't the best, well they just don't get anything.

18:14 And so this perpetuates competition so we create competitive societies, so we can all kinda climb on top of each other's back trying to get to the top and then what happens is we end up with a mentality of scarcity, there's not enough. Now, this is amazing to me that we can live in the most powerful, wealthiest, world in the... oh... wealthiest country in the world and I could ask anybody, I don't have enough.

18:46 I don't have enough because we've built this into our model of competition we built this which demands scarcity and they would create our classrooms on this and those who, you know I wanna get the gummy-bear, get this, and I wanna get all these things. And what happens is we rely on rewards and punishments and create our classrooms based on the same model. And we create two groups of people the haves and the have-nots. Now in Conscious Discipline we believe we're all literally connected. Now I used to play this game, when I walk down in the airports, I would play this game, we've been having technical difficulties that's why you can't see me otherwise you could see me and I must admit I dressed up for you so I'm sad now. You can see actually only from my waist up which is what you could see, but I do have on flip flops.

19:38 So I used to play this game with myself when I walked through the airport and I would look at all people. Now my mind can get, hopefully a you can relate to this, my mind can get a little critical and I'm thinking maybe yours can too because I was raised on this notion that we're separate and and I'm trying to get things and I'm trying to give things away like if I could give my criticism to someone away that way I'm free of it I didn't give my get to you by blaming you and I'm free it's never worked so far, but I keep trying to give all this stuff away, um... uh... so what happens is I walk down in the airport and I'll see people maybe they're a little overweight go, "Oh my God." I don't say this out loud but I go "Thank God that's not me, at least I'm only thirty pounds overweight and not a hundred."

20:24 and then I realize 'what if all these people just walking around the planet are just a cell in my body?' How does that help me by looking at my liver cell over there, who looks just a little plump and being nasty to my own cell, what if I started hating the liver? What if we're the cells in one body of humanity? And I started hating my own personal liver?! Or I didn't like my kidney's for some reason. And everyday I'm like, "Ah ya stupid kidney."

20:54 I can see how... how cancer could take over the planet and maybe we have a cancer of separateness that we need to deal with first. So if we did a different way, in Conscious Discipline we call it the school family. What if we did differently? What if we look through the lens of compassion. And compassion says, "I see through that lens of connectiveness and so that everybody I see, everything is a part of me.

21:25 What would happen then? Well we wouldn't focus on getting, we would focus on giving, because if I gave to you love, I gain in love, if I give to you appreciation, I gain in it, if someone makes a wonderful product or something it's gloriously um... successful don't I feel jealous, I'm like "Oh my gosh they paved the way for the rest of us!" In the classroom the children are like "How can I help you be successful?", as opposed to, "How can I help us all be successful?", as opposed to, "How do I trash you so I can be student of the week?"

22:02 And we create this sense of compassion and giving in the classroom and so kids don't say "What do I get if I'm good?", kids start saying "How do I give of my goodness to one another? How can it be of service and if we build these compassionate classrooms then within them we teach them skills of cooperation and on top of that we place, healthy competition. We've got a world we can count on and if we build our classrooms on competition and then add onto it more competition and add onto that more competition that's called war, and this season, we call of the holiday season you often hear this phrase, 'peace on earth' and so we need to start with where that begins and that starts with us. Also I used to think too um...

23:05 that if we start seeing each other as connected the idea of revenge becomes impossible, because I'm only hurting myself. So I hope that from this seminar, you can start to see the fundamental shifts if you look down, here's our fundamental shift in intention, it's if you go from the power of unity to replace this sense of separateness you will make a fundamental shift in how you discipline and guide children you will go from "How do I make the child behave?", which is really, "How do I get them to do something?"

23:50 Every article I've ever written, every, I'm doing a radio show next uh... this Thursday and the first question how guarantee the person will ask me how you get the child to do something and I have to spend five minutes before I answer that question because we're asking the wrong questions. The question is how do I help the child be successful? I can't tell you how many people come to my house and say "My child is failing math they're failing this in high school.

24:19 And I try to get them to do this, I try taking away the car I've promised them money if they're successful.", and I've asked them, "Well have you helped them be successful? How about a tutor?" "Ah, I'm not going to give them a tutor, unless they've shown me some effort first. So we're making this huge shift, huge shift, the next one is instead of "How do I get the world to go my way?", it's "How do I find my personal gifts and then give them back and contribute to making a better world for all."

24:54 Now often when I speak to groups of people at the end they'll come up to me and go, "My goodness it was like you were in my house. You were in my head, it's like you follow me around all day you see all this junk that goes on in my head." Well maybe on some level we all can tap into each other's minds we all have the same needs on some level and we all can relate to some for our own struggles and it could be that it's not that I've been to your personal home, we've all come into each other's home and that home is called 'The Home of Humanity".