The Social Functioning and Personal Functioning programs are modern skill-building programs designed to improve your social position and life quality. They were created in response to the flood of ineffective courses that promise life-changing results with nothing more than a few textbook takeaways. Those who are on the self-development journey for a while know that change requires a systematic approach that targets core thought processes and active practice to unlearn life hacks formed earlier in life.
With this in mind, we set out to find the methods powerful enough to reach the regions where change needs to happens and developed programs with an immersive, engaging twist. The language and structure are optimized for those in competitive or high-stress fields, such as combat athletes, entrepreneurs, leaders, first responders, mediators, etc. At the heart of these programs is building understanding of the influences coming at you, recognizing your responses, and seeing how those responses impact outcomes. The programs provide both the practice and knowledge necessary to make deliberate, meaningful changes in your life.
Theoretical background
The courses are anchored by three influential theoretical frameworks. One of which is William James’s work (1902) on self-governance and ethics (Brennan & Boutroux, 1912), which often resurfaces in modern studies related to educational reforms. To James, changing ourselves is a matter of reorienting our own experiences and habits of thinking and acting, rather than passively judging them based on external opinions (Stagoll, 2023), which you might know as self-blame or people-pleasing.
The other core pillar of the programs is the Power Treat Meaning Framework (PTMF; Johnstone et al., 2018), which openly discusses the impact of systemic inequalities on mental health. The framework represents a major shift in approaching distress and provides evidence-based insight into why and how our social and personal functioning is influenced by major power structures, cultural norms, and family systems (Boyle, 2022). It was developed in response to the growing “drug culture”—the trend of prescribing pills to treat all forms of complaints.
The social exchange theory is the third underpinning of the programs (Lawler & Thye, 2006; Cook & Emerson, 1978). This constantly expanding theory describes how all human interactions involve some form of give-and-take, whether in power, emotions, or other resources such as time, attention, money, or labor. Our resilience programs actively promotes gaining awareness of these dynamics, as social life is defined as a flow of interpersonal interactions in which power and influence are exercised (Cook et al., 2013), shaping your life outcome and overall life experience.
Program structure
Both programs, Social functioning and Personal functioning, are designed to make you able to identify and respond to the underlying emotional and power exchanges that often go unnoticed. Some of these exchanges are subtle or unintentional, yet represent exploitation attempts in everyday life, which can lead to marginalization and fatigue. To build the ability of holding your boundaries, the program modules revolve around real-life contexts, while the scenario-based drills replicate the learning experience of ancestral social environments that were built on play and interaction-based learning (Damasio, 2007). This approach, called evolutionary-relevant educational setups, is regarded as more effective than formal educational structures (Gruskin & Geher, 2018), particularly in case of such complex topics as social resilience.
Both courses are structured into modules to break the task of building social fitness into smaller, manageable practices. With a combination of visual, textual, and interactive materials, the programs make learning an active, self-directed process, rather than asking you to passively take on information (Gonzales, 2015), giving you more responsibility and control over your outcome (Sejpal, 2013). The curses are best fit with adult professionals, as the ability for self-reflection and the capacity to recognize hidden assumptions develops during early adulthood (King & Kitchener, 2004) from around 20 years of age.
The program modules are learner-centered, require no note-taking, and build on the methodological and theoretical innovation of GrapplingArc to achieve result with as little forced memorization as possible. The modules gradually increase the amount of effort required, in line with your growing social competence, so the lessons stay both challenging and highly rewarding at the same time. These are core factors of flow-based learning (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989) which ensures deeply ingrained outcomes. The digital format offers convenience, anonymity (Lal and Adair, 2014), making sure that there is no judgement just playful experimentation with the displayed scenarios (Ramdoss et al., 2011).
Summary
The Social Functioning and Personal Functioning programs are designed to develop the ability to handle high exposure and navigate complex social and interpersonal dynamics. The teaching of which falls beyond the reach of formal education yet strongly correlates with success in life (Algan et al., 2014), including social position, life quality, and life expectancy. While known from anecdotes that “your net worth is your network,” social skills are still left to people to pick up by chance, which leaves those born into less well-functioning communities with lower chances to take their talent forward. This is what these programs aim to change, giving a stronger start/restart and pulling up those chances of success.
References
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Stagoll, C. S. (2023). Transforming One’s Self: The Therapeutic Ethical Pragmatism of William James. State University of New York Press.