Let’s just avoid unpleasant or difficult conversations, because we fear being offended or hurt by the things that could be said.

This is what it appears many (maybe the majority) think is a clever idea, certainly modern education and parenting have endorsed this view, it appears. As it is now common and applauded to teach with self-esteem as the major concern and helicopter parenting is something to be proud of.

We then express concern about a lack of resilience in students and children, without examining how our avoidance of difficult discussions may have contributed.

The avoidance of these conversations creates a lower tolerance for feedback, which is now instantly labeled as criticism, thus they yell loudly about their offense and hurt, which closes the conversation. This in turn stops learning and lowers their ability to deal with this and the next issues. Thus, a lack of resilience, and this cycle is a continual downward spiral. This is a notable example of a lack of evidential Critical Thinking that has us following this bad example of self-esteem over all other measures and our inability to build resilience in our current younger generation.

This is not only prevalent in our students and children, but adults also can’t have difficult conversations, recently three colleagues of mine avoided a difficult conversation and thus corrupted the whole enterprise they claim to be building (or destroying), all depending on what you think is important. Again, another example of a lack of real Critical Thinking.

The answer I believe is to encourage difficult and unpleasant discussions and to view these as feedback, and not as criticism. This will develop the skills that built resilience and encourage genuine Critical Thinking, which can only be good for us as a community aspiring to solutions for big problems like Global Warming and Economic Evolution.

This view was inspired by my personal experience and a Jordan Peterson video, please view it via the link below if you are interested.

If you would like to speak more about this, please contact me at 0417097642 or contact me via my Contact Me page.