Kay:

Hey there and welcome to another week of the Kay & Shi Show.

Shi:

We’re so glad to be jumping into the topic for this episode really looking at the role of society and how it shapes who we are and the characters we develop over time.

Kay:

Now, one of the best ways that I’ve ever heard this explained is actually a combo teaching between two of my personal favorite teachers. This is Kay here, and those teachers are John Maxwell and my sister Shila Morris. So, the quote from John that gets expanded on by Shila that I just absolutely love is one of John’s most famous quotes where he says, “Everything that you want is uphill.”

Shi:

In fact, if you’ve ever heard John speak, you’ve likely heard him say this message. It’s one that he says often and integrates into most subjects. Even when he did his minute with Maxwell filming about it, he said, I’ve literally said this thousands of times, I could probably do the arm motion and you would all know what I’m about to say. And that is absolutely true because whenever he says this, he puts his arm up in order to indicate an incline and then he says all of your habits, your bad habits are downhill. So, you’ve got this real visual representation of the things that are worthwhile are uphill and this is an intrinsically, I think, easily recognizable universal truth that the things that are worthy that you want are going to take time, effort, and dedication.

The teaching that Kay is referring to here is one that I often share with my Sociology students and that is that everything worthwhile is uphill, but everyone’s hill incline is different and it’s different based on who you are as a demographic and a psychographic and as a piece of the human family. So, if you are from a wealthy family and you are from the majority race which is white in most parts of the world, and the ruling ideology that comes with that if you are part of that, your hill incline is much less steep than someone who is a minority and ethnic who has possibly any kind of felony record. If you’re from a single-parent household, all of these things increase the incline of your hill. So yes, everything worthwhile is uphill, but the rate of incline on everyone’s hills is different. And when we understand that we start to:

(a) now analyze our own hill and

(b) start to understand how this impacts everyone.

 Kay:

So if you’re a person of color, a single parent who has to work multiple jobs, and you want to move out of those multiple jobs and into the entrepreneurial space it’s going to be a lot harder for you to do that than a single white person who is fresh out of college that likely got paid for on their behalf, or that they were easily able to obtain student loans in order to finish and complete their college journey. So, it becomes more difficult based on what you’ve got stacked against you and so a lot of people I think are hypnotized by the meritocracy that we have here in the US. You do good and what you do is if I can just pull myself up by the bootstraps, if I can just take enough action, if I can just work hard enough, then I can achieve anything and while yes, that is true some people have to work harder based on where they land, like Shila said, within their demographics and their psychographics.

Shi:

Climbing any hill is difficult and so you can see how sometimes people who don’t understand this incline piece get frustrated like, well, look, I still had to work hard for all of my things. That’s true. Climbing a hill is hard, scaling a cliff is a lot harder, especially if there’s no net or no gear. And so, understanding that helps you, I think, orient yourself as we were talking about into where you fit, because you don’t exist in a vacuum and none of us do, and we all are heavily influenced by our environment, our culture and our society. And that’s the piece that we really want to bring forward at least in this segment is understanding that you are definitely striving up your own hill and that it’s going to take work and there’s so much more context around that, and you can climb the hill better when you understand that.

Kay:

One of the things you can also do on your hill is if you understand this principle that not everyone’s incline is created equally, you’re able then to maybe help somebody who has a steeper hill at understanding that your hill is less steep. If your incline is easier, you’re less winded getting to the top. You’re not sweating as hard as you’re working. You probably don’t have as many boulders in your way, or if you face a boulder maybe you come over it easier, but you learn a few things. You have the opportunity to come behind somebody and help them up their hill as well. So, understanding where you land within this can be a helpful juxtaposition for maybe reaching out that hand and helping push somebody else up their hill.

Shi:

Now, in the next segment, we’re going to look a little bit more about the role of society and how it shapes who you are so make sure you tune in to that.