A wonderful conference that had inspired and taught me also left me feeling ancient. The younger participants were light-years ahead of me in their knowledge of technology, marketing, and social media. I felt like I’d pulled up to a jet fueling station in a horse and buggy. While their spaceships intrigued me, I wasn’t sure I could—or wanted to—drive one.

Photo by: Samuel Clara

In Made to Stick, Dan and Chip Heath told the story of a third grade teacher who wanted to erase prejudice in her students.[1] The story also shows the paralyzing effect of a negative self-perception.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated. This teacher wondered how she could help her class really grasp the tragedy of prejudice. One morning she told her class that brown eyes were better than blue. She moved all the blue-eyed students to the back of the room. They had to wear collars so they could be recognized from a distance. Brown eyes were given a longer recess.

Friendships immediately dissolved as brown-eyed children shunned their blue-eyed peers. One child even asked her how she could be the teacher since she had “them blue eyes.” The next day, she told the class that she’d made a mistake. Blue eyes were superior to brown. The blue-eyed children squealed with delight and ran to put their collars around their brown-eyed classmates.

The teacher noticed something else. That day the blue-eyed children were faster on their spelling drill. Continue Reading