Sara NESS '09和她的真实革命
When Sara NESS ’09 graduated from Ellis and began her freshman year at the University of Texas, she quickly learned a lesson many people encounter at that time in their lives: living with people is hard, 尤其是在像大学宿舍这样的公共场所. 但大多数人可能会看到室友的情况, Sara saw an opportunity to learn from her peers—and to teach others how to do the same.
今天，萨拉是首席执行官和首席催化剂 真正的革命, an organization she founded to teach people how to live and communicate effectively by bringing their authentic selves to their peer and professional groups, 他们的谈话, 以及他们解决问题的过程. 她曾与来自谷歌的团队合作, Mindvalley, 和火人节, and her writings and teaching have led to the foundation of more than 30 authentic relating communities, 还有表演团体, 非营利组织, 独立企业.
Sara graduated from the University of Texas in 2013 as a humanities major specializing in intentional living communities such as co-ops and cohousing. Earlier this month she talked with our Director of Marketing and Communications about her career and about how Ellis supported her to find and love her own authentic self.
跟我说说真实革命吧. 你为什么决定发展这个组织，它的目标是什么?
有几件事促使我这么做. The most direct one was that I got really interested in intentional living communities when I was in college. I was living in housing co-ops and it was the first time I had a self-determined living situation with a lot of different people where we pretty much had to manage ourselves. 这对我来说是一个迷人的概念. Who leaves a bunch of late teens or early 20-year-olds alone in a house and tells them to manage their finances? I got super interested in this phenomenon of group living, and so I decided to travel around the U.S. and make a documentary about it because I wanted to know what happens after college. 在这种情况下，人们会去哪里继续生活?
当我在旅行的时候, I met people who introduced me to authentic relating and it seemed like a practice that dealt with a lot of the issues I was seeing in the housing co-ops. 有效地共同生活归结为几件事. 一个是结构. 你有什么规矩和责任? 你是如何组织你的房子的? 但最主要的是人际关系. 当冲突出现时，你是如何处理的? 你如何谈论困难的事情? 当你不在最佳状态或别人不在最佳状态时，你如何处理? 这是一个非常非常难学的东西.
When I got back I was just fascinated with this idea of having communications games with rules for interaction instead of having this uncertain minefield of trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do or say based on context clues, 我知道我并不总是注意到这一点. Communication games are structured interactions that tell you who’s going to speak, 他们会说什么, 以及格式是什么. They just let you focus on specific pieces of communication without worrying about social stigma. 事实证明，这是一种建立社区的绝佳方式. 我们将创造带有一系列主题游戏的事件, 比如探索吸引力, 或同情, 或好奇心, 或极化, 我们会邀请大家. 我们最终把它变成了一个公共团体. Over time it grew and the sort of communication that people would learn from it made it a lot easier to connect with them. 当我即将毕业的时候, 有两位企业家和我坐在一起说, “如果你想把它变成一门生意, 我们会帮助你.“这才是真正开始的原因. 没有帮助是很难形成东西的, 因此，获得他们的信任对这一切的发生至关重要.
在当今社会, why is it so important that we both communicate well with others and bring our authentic selves to that conversation?
我想说，有几个原因. It feels to me like authenticity is a combination of self awareness and external honesty. 人是很有直觉的生物，对吧? 如果你对某人撒谎，那么在某种意义上，他们可以看出有些事情不对劲. 当这种情况不断发生时，我们就会逐渐失去对那个人的信任. 为了获得信任，了解自己是谁是很重要的, 这是一个终身的过程，包括不断的质疑，比如, “我为什么要做我正在做的事情?“我有什么感觉??”“我的哪些部分可以舒服地展示出来，哪些不可以?“我认为谈论我们的价值观的真实性是很重要的, and to think about what’s so important to you that if it was taken away you’d really struggle. 当你与世界接触时，了解这些事情是很重要的. 掩蔽需要很多能量. If you’re spending so much energy trying to maintain a persona that’s adjacent to who you are, 然后你就没有多少精力去做生活中的其他事情了.
现在也比以前更难隐藏了. 我们的生活在互联网上一直都是公开的, 人们可以追溯你的历史，并把它放在你面前. I think in some ways it’s actually a really scary development because we do change over time. Your authenticity can change with you; it’s expected. 因为有人会拿着你20年前做过的事大声说出来, you have to be kind of careful about knowing yourself because it will sometimes come back to you.
对我来说，真实性和联系是同一枚硬币的两面. If you don’t know why you’re holding the view you’re holding then you’re a lot more likely to be kind of militant in holding it. 如果你能解释你这么想的原因, 然后你就有地方和其他人谈论它了. 你可以解释你的价值观和你的观点. 如果你只是按照别人告诉你的去做, 那里没有学习、协商或成长的空间. That process of constant questing and awareness gives you space to have really interesting dialogue with other people. 自我质疑需要很多精力.
你在澳门新葡新京官方最喜欢的经历是什么, 以及它们是如何帮助你塑造自我意识的?
One of my favorite things about Ellis is that it taught me how to break the rules of life, 我的意思是如何以一种不会被击落的方式做我自己. 和我的英语老师一起，我会用抑扬格五音步写作文. 我在一个俱乐部里，我们会在镇上闲逛，在街道的柱子上张贴诗歌. 有很多空间可以探索和尝试新事物, 也会遇到一些超出我能力范围或不舒服的情况. There are moments of trusting where your teachers just trust that you can figure it out, 这对我来说真的很特别. It wasn’t an environment where everything was kept shielded and we were given all the rules. 这就像是给了我们一个空间去思考问题的环境. 当我现在教书时, that has really influenced me; that way of giving students the tools and then giving them a lot of space to figure out their own way of making it happen.
What other values did you learn at Ellis that have carried into your current work?
绝对是对研究和学术的热爱. One thing that really set me apart in my field is that I am really good at research and synthesizing data. 比如大四的时候要写论文, Ellis definitely set the stage for me to be interested in research and learning and writing well, 这最终成为我与众不同的主要原因之一.
澳门新葡新京官方的另一个真正的超能力是，它教会我们思考思考. 我们学会了如何以元思维思考问题，“我在做什么?和“我为什么要这么做??，“这在未来意味着什么??“这真的是一个超级大国.
我觉得澳门新葡新京官方也很擅长教你如何寻求帮助, 这最终成为一项巨大的技能. I cannot overstate that as an entrepreneur the amount of times you have to ask someone for help is unreal. 我记得在澳门新葡新京官方, 甚至在大一的时候, 我还是会回去找中学老师，跟他们打招呼，问他们问题. 有很多“如果你要求的话”, 这是一种心态, 我在很多地方都没有发现这一点.
Is there any advice or encouragement you’d like to share with current Ellis students?
我们公司有一个准则:试验和犯错. Something that can be scary in the world is that your mistakes will get held onto, or they will get recorded; however, you can’t actually learn who you are unless you test out a lot of different things. 当你尝试新事物时，你会做得很糟糕. It’s going to take a while of doing it badly before you figure out how you want to set boundaries and what your authenticity is. 不要期望自己一开始就把事情做好. Understand that doing them badly is actually a learning process as long as you keep your eyes open and keep asking people how they’re affected by the thing you’re trying to learn. 实践. 沟通你的过程. Let yourself do things badly before you do them well, and let yourself experiment.
