Morris Massey theorized our personal values lock in at ten years of age, and remain in place unless / until we have a Significant Emotional Event (SEE) that changes them. (see the blog on Values at 10). Massey also called SEE’s value establishers and changers. Our SEE’s determine our world view as well. For instance, Einstein said the most important belief (worldview) is whether or not the world is a safe place.
Personally, my SEE’s have created an “I am always protected” mentality / worldview. When I was 10, making and giving peanut butter sandwiches to “winos” on the streets of Los Angeles, one of them took me aside and told me not to come back. I might not be safe with some of the men, he explained. I didn’t interpret this as the world wasn’t safe: I interpreted it as I was protected whenever conditions weren’t safe. And this has been the basis of my adventurous (some would say risk taking) lifestyle.
REFLECT:
Do you believe the world is a safe place?
If so, why?
Of not, why not?
What SEE’s led to this belief?
I was reminded of both these approaches while reading Never Far From Home, Bruce Jackson’s memoir. One of the few to make it out of the New York City housing projects as a financial success, he started as an entertainer and went on to become an attorney. Driven by his love of entertainment and his desire to protect the rights of Black people, he turned down high paying traditional attorney jobs to representing Black talent. To make it work financially – he was earning 10% of his client’s income – he moved back home to live with his mom in the projects.
Jackson became a hugely successful entertainment attorney for hip hop royalty, including L.L. Cool, J.Pter Rock, C.L. Smooth, Heavy D, and Sean “Puff Daddy Combs”. Then he was recruited by Microsoft as part of a diversity effort, and climbed the corporate ladder to work for the Office of the President as Associate General Counsel. He rose to Managing Director of strategic partnerships, overseeing programs worth billions.
During a divorce, he once again moved back to his mother’s home in the housing projects. He walked to and from his Microsoft executive office., where his colleagues knew nothing of his lower class Black background, much less his return to it. Of this situation, he says:
…mostly, yes, because of convenience —proximity to work, support of family, a comfortable bed, and home cooked meals – but also to save a little money and to remind myself, every day, that this was my home. …it would always be part of my life, part of what made me the man I became. …(it) grounded me, reconnected me to my origin story.
So how do his moves back to the projects apply to his values – profile at 10, his SEE’s? When he was ten, on a trip to his grandmother’s house via the subway, he was falsely accused of robbery, then chased, handcuffed, and arrested by six white police officers. At the station, he was handcuffed to a chair in an interrogation room and forced to confess. But he didn’t confess because he didn’t do anything. His mother and uncle were able to get him released, though he was thoroughly traumatized. When the real thief was caught, “there was no apology, no acknowledgement of lives disrupted, or a young boy’s innocence stolen.”
Jackson was arrested two more times as an adult. Once, he was pulled over for having a flickering taillight (which didn’t flicker). The computer search turned up an unpaid parking ticket his brother got while driving his car. As Jackson explained it, he was a black man driving a car that was too nice in a neighborhood that was too gentrified. He was jailed overnight.
The second arrest was similarly nonsensical. Pulled over for no reason, he was told there was an irregularity on his license, but they didn’t know what it was. It was a clerical error that showed he was driving without insurance, but he had proof of insurance. He was again jailed overnight
I was just saddened and angered by the irony of my circumstances: fifty-three years old, Georgetown Law School graduate, successful attorney for Microsoft incarcerated without cause (again!), in a jail located not more than a mile from where I was held as a ten-year-old falsely accused of theft. I’d lived a lifetime to move t
With these SEE’s, I would guess safety is his primary value. And family support – which includes community support. So whenever he was going through a period of struggle and / or turmoil, creating a feeling of unsafety, he moved back to the projects, where he felt safer than he did driving his car in Manhattan! Even though he heard gun shots during the night, even though he was attacked in the stairwell of his mothers apartment building – even though his best friends were mostly dead from drug related issues. At least in the projects, he was protected by family and his drug boss friends. And police did not proactively persecute him.
REFLECT:
Do SEE’s create logical / rational beliefs?
What are some of your beliefs created by SEE’s
Jackson has tuned his experiences in positive directions, taking a leading role in various diversity projects and causes. He sets a high standard for leadership and the difference it can make. But he most likely still sees the world outside the projects as an unsafe place
APPLY:
List your SEE’s?
Identify the beliefs they created.
Choose the ones that don’t serve your leadership development.
Create a strategy to change them.
Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law, Bruce Jackson, Atria Books, 2023.
