Being a Good Enough Person (Dolly Chugh)
\u201cWhat I'm positing is, is an ability to grapple with contradiction. So that's the paradox mindset that Wendy Smith, Maryanne Lewis and other scholars have shown that when we're able to sit with two conflicting things in our minds, for example that if we stick with the example in South Africa, it may be true that if I'm a student that my parents and my grandparents participated in actively supported apartheid and that they were also wonderful parents and grandparents, right? Like those two things can be true, and being able to sit with that contradiction gives me. Like emotional limberness to kind of, you know, push my way through the, the emotional slog of this is awful. This is awful. And to sit with terrible things happened, that's the only way you can do it.\u201d So says Dolly Chugh, award-winning social psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she is an expert researcher in the psychology of people and goodness. Her first book is the wonderful, The Person You Mean to Be and she just released a second, called, A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change. Both books serve as inspiring, yet practical guides for those of us who seek to be better. A More Just Future builds on Chugh\u2019s first book, which equipped readers with the tools to be \u201cgood-ish\u201d people who stand up for their values. In her latest, she offers a guide to reckoning with the whitewashed history of our country in order to build a better future.\xa0\nThe seeds of today\u2019s inequalities were sown in the past, she tells us, and it will take an extra dose of resilience and grit to grapple with the truth of our history and to make the systemic changes needed to mend the fabric of our country. Moving from willful ignorance to willful awareness isn\u2019t easy, leading to uncomfortable feelings of shame, guilt, disbelief, and resistance when we encounter revelations that run against what we have long been told. But it is possible to love your country with a broken heart, she says, imploring us to grapple with contradiction, employing the paradox mindset as we shift from the rigidness of \u201ceither/or\u201d to the nuance of \u201cboth/and.\u201d\xa0\n\nEPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:\n\nWired for consistency\u2026\n\nLight vs. heat-based change\u2026\n\nSitting in paradox\u2026\n\nBelief grief\u2026\n\n\nMORE FROM DOLLY CHUGH:\nA More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change\nThe Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias\n\u201cHow to let go of being a "good" person\u2014and become a better person,\u201d TED Talk\nCheck out Dolly's Website\nFollow her on Twitter and Instagram\n\u201cThe Truth About Rosa Parks And Why It Matters To Your Diversity Initiative,\u201d Forbes\n \nTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy\n \n Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices