That realization asked me a question: How could I make it warmer for those I taught, or anyone for that matter, who live with a sense of inner unhappiness?
I came to Smart Love and these discoveries while teaching in a charter middle/high school. Most if not all of my students came to the school because the mainstream system didn't want them. The system failed these students, so the students failed the system. While working with them, I experienced a behavior that baffled me until I encountered Smart Love. I found them wonderful if troubled folks, and I would often comment on some intelligent comment or helpful behavior they contributed to class. Very soon after that positive recognition with praise, that person would breach in some way that encouraged me to respond negatively to them. Baffled about what to do, I came upon Smart Love in my search for something that would help them to allow me to openly like them, show them an authentic positive response, and avoid their negative response to my positive efforts.
I decided to simply talk to these middle school students about what I learned in Smart Love about inner unhappiness and leave it to them to choose how they would respond. I explained the way in which the idea of inner happiness and unhappiness worked. That drew questions and discussion especially whether that meant caregivers were to blame. I read that part about not blaming aloud, and said that thinking about this idea could help them become better parents if they wanted to do that. If they could overcome this meaning perspective for themselves, they could offer a new meaning perspective to their own children.
We also discussed what, if anything, someone can do about inner unhappiness. Could it be shifted from unhappiness to happiness? Smart Love asserts that people with inner unhappiness can make that shift. It happens when the person who feels inner unhappiness discovers that she/he can receive unconditional positive regard, is worthy of unconditional positive regard. Once aware of their need, they could do something themselves. They could make a choice. They could choose to offer such regard to others and, in the process, might feel it grow within them for themselves.
I said that I would make it a point to offer all of them unconditional positive regard. Frankly, I felt I had been working at that all along, but their new awareness and my current promise might have more meaning than what had happened before. Some students asked if that meant they could do anything that they wanted. That was a good question. Does unconditional positive regard mean open season on conduct? I answered that they always had that choice. They could do anything they wanted anytime—when they didn't care about the response to those actions. They could get punished, so that was meant to deter those sorts of decisions. However, they were right. Punishment doesn't argue for unconditional positive regard. If I say one thing, what can I do about the other?
I said that unconditional positive regard allows my expectations for each of them to rise quite high and keep rising. It also allowed me to accept their best as they went along. It also encouraged me to express my disagreement with choices in conduct they made that did them or our class what I perceived as harm. In that spirit, I would take note of such negative choice so they could think about them. Unconditional positive regard includes offering awareness. It also says that I want to keep the action separated from the actor. If student A makes a bad choice, I see it as a bad choice not as a demonstration of student A as a bad person. If I see A as a bad person who does bad things, I probably will choose to punish A. If I see the choice as a mistake from a good person, then I reach for awareness. My perception told me, as I told them, that many people had confused them with their mistakes which made in very difficult to learn from those mistakes and make better choices in the future. In older people, inner happiness comes as a reciprocal process of regard, and we could engage in that together.
We did, and in many ways, life got better for us all. Did we still share problems in class? We did, but we also found ways of resolving them and making new choices after previous mistakes. By the end of the second semester, many remarkably fine things happened.