Chapter 1 of Onward focuses on knowing ourselves. For a strong foundation of resilience, we must have a strong sense of who we are and what we believe in. Exploring our values and our personality types can be fascinating, but then comes the hard part. What about the parts of our personality that we aren’t even aware of? The parts that often show a darker side to us, a side that we aren’t proud of and often a side that makes us feel defensive.
The Hidden Brain Podcast: The Mind of the Village: Understanding Our Implicit Biases addresses this topic. Listen to get a deeper understanding of implicit bias. In the preface to The Onward Workbook, Elena shares her fantasy about schools that “there’ll be conversations about how to shed ourselves of biases so that we can see our kids’ full humanity and potential and how to cultivate resilience in our students.” Take the first step towards this by exploring your implicit biases. Project Implicit Bias out of Harvard University is a great place to start.