FE293: Tough Enough - Handling Difficult People with Grace
Course Details
This course is for you - about you - and designed to meet your needs.
Emotional resilience is a skill that can be developed but it is often not easy or intuitive. Learn to identify your triggers and explore what "monsters" are in your head (or under your bed) and then develop a plan to build advocacy and resilience using tools rooted in science.
Human trigger stacking and reactivity are real - that straw that broke the camel's back ends relationships and jobs and lays people right out. How can you reduce your stress when difficult people are part of your daily life?
Studies of note and importance to you in your training and showing as well as life more generally are considered throughout this course.
Gold students will have the opportunity to identify their own difficult situations/people, discuss a variety of tools and techniques to test and then discuss results. Silver students will be able to ask two specific questions or discuss their plans and ask more general questions. Bronze students will benefit from the lectures and resources as well as the discussion forums and a TA to assist them working through the course material.
Registration
There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please
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Gold Level includes access to all course materials and the ability to post questions and videos to the course forums. Students will receive instructor feedback on written and video assignments.
Silver Level includes access to all course materials and the ability to participate in the discussion forum. Students may ask GENERAL questions about course materials and may submit two, one-minute videos for instructor feedback.
Bronze Level includes access to all course materials and the ability to read all questions and answers posted in the class forums. Students will not post questions or submit written or video assignments.
For more details, refund policies, and answers to commonly asked questions see our FAQ page.
** This syllabus is subject to changes in order as lectures are being developed and as students share their specific needs as this is the first time running this class - adaptations will certainly happen! You can expect two lectures a week with the occasional extra bit of reading or watching for you.
Week One
Self Help Rant
Identifying Issues
Negative Self Talk and Ways to Get it Out of Your Head
Week Two
Monsters Under Your Bed? How to move them along or to a place they aren't causing you stress
Terms and Studies you need to know (Imposterism, Fundamental Attribution Error, Milgram and more)
Emotional Intelligence
Week Three
Advocacy for you and the ones you love (challenges are everywhere!)
The Fine Art of Persuasion
Crazy Makers
Week Four
Calm, Confident, Conflict - (what a week this will be!)
Developing A Growth Mindset
The Four Agreements Applied to Dog Training
Week Five
Building and Learning Resilience (because, reality check, life happens)
Studies of Note and their implications for you (Harlow, Elliot)
Week Six
joy, Creativity
Taking Care of Yourself (Maslow, Meditation and Emotional, Physical and Social Self Care)
This is from week four - this is a good lecture to share as a sample of the kind of work we will be delving into
Tough Enough
Developing a “Growth” mindset
You’ve heard the term “growth mindset”, and likely a “fixed mindset” as well.
Here’s a quick overview in case you aren’t familiar with either:
You may already have a good understanding of growth mindset – and if you are playing with TEAM you’ll be familiar with one concept of it – “not yet”! Yet is a hallmark word for growth mindset! What a growth mindset does is allow you develop and grow. It’s a learning process but from it can come relationship improvements and an understanding of our potential to change. The presumption that we can always improve, learn more or do better turns out to be critical in terms of developing resilience and facing tough situations.
Here is Dr Dweck speaking about teaching growth mindset to students. It explores a little of the science of why a growth mindset can be such a positive:
Resilience has it’s own lecture in this class but it’s pretty apparent that a growth mindset will support and improve a resilient attitude. A growth attitude will also push you to realize that mistakes and errors are exactly that – no more, no less than information we can use in the future. A fixed mindset is an element too often of blame being assigned for life events, and self confidence being eroded internally.
So how do we move from fixed to growth mindsets? We recognize that it will be work and we set aside time to work on it.
Accept that change and errors as an opportunity to learn and experience life. Stop worrying about what other people think and
Find your driving force and hang onto it – this may involve learning some new skills to move negative thinking and thoughts that are not positive along
Embrace your strengths – it’s not bragging! Honest! Writing them out and referring to that list in moments of doubt may help. Poll your friends and coworkers/clients about what they see as your strengths if you are stuck.
Understand that life is full of ups and downs – peaks and valleys will happen so let them come. Do not become too emotionally connected to either extreme as you know “this too shall pass”.
Ask questions – of yourself, of others. It’s trite but true happiness (at least the internal type) is a journey not a destination so enjoy the learning you can do along the way.
Be thoughtful – not only to others but yourself, not only in terms of being kind, but also in terms of reflection.
Value process goals at least as much as outcome goals and when one goal is met, set another! Effort matters more than talent. That’s a huge shift in thinking for many of us.... but effort is what will build talent. Trust me ;)
Take action, even imperfect action. It takes time to learn let alone master something. Be willing to experiment, reflect and test.
Realize that you are you – no one else can be responsible for your attitude and thoughts. Even in imperfection you are way ahead of most of the world – simply by virtue of caring and working on yourself and your partner as hard as you are <3
Homework: What are three key points that you can see an application of the notions of growth mindset to yourself and dog sports in? (or your own difficult situation) Are you applying them now? How can we start to build them into your training and planning?
" I really enjoyed this class. You provided us with a wealth of information that I am still having to process. You steered me on a better path to be a better person to myself and to others. Thank you for all your guidence! I really appreciate it.
" I learned I bury a lot of things when I can't cope, and learned to use new methods to deal with problems."
"Andrea is a wonderful caring human. This course was my first GOLD course PLUS it was sharing really provate thoughts (not all good) so was really confronting at times. I never once felt judged by Andrea or the other participants. In fact quite the opposite. I felt valiadated and heard. This is a great course and the time went way too quickly"
