Bring Your Main Character Energy

The Sanborn Western Camps team has recently returned from the American Camp Association National Conference in San Diego. You are undoubtedly thinking, “Lucky ducks! Out of the cold and into the sunshine…” but the San Diego weather while we were there was FOR the ducks…pouring rain almost every day of the conference.

We made the most of the experience by connecting with other camp professionals, attending outstanding sessions and listening to engaging speakers. One of the highlights for all of us was keynote speaker Dr. Angus Fletcher, a professor of Story Science at Ohio State University. Dr. Fletcher shared that “our individual character is developed from our story.”

Character, as he described, is “doing the right thing when it is hard.” Character is developed when we combine wisdom and emotional strength. Wisdom is KNOWING the right thing to do while emotional strength is DOING the right thing. In his research he has found that character develops most in young people when they have the opportunity to become their own role models and find their own “main character energy.”

Main character energy, unlike “main character syndrome,” comes from connecting to a sense of awe and wonder in the world and within yourself. Wonder is prompted in the brain by a “positive surprise”–you didn’t think you could climb a mountain…SURPRISE!…you didn’t think you would sleep outside, let alone outside of a tent, and contemplate your place in the universe…SURPRISE!

Wonder, and its associated dopamine, has been hijacked by the continual screen scrolling and “just one more reel” algorithms of social media. This is exceptionally true for children because they have limited personal life experience they can draw on to contextualize what they see on social media to put it into any good use and growth. It’s why we can see or read something on social media and think, “oh that’s a great idea” but–within minutes or days–we can no longer directly draw on that example.

Real human stories are structured differently. When stories are shared, something remarkable happens in our brains. Individual grit is developed when we can find wonder in our own story, but true individual growth comes from finding wonder in other peoples’ stories. In-person story sharing is a gift–especially with people you know and respect. It helps you deepen your grit and, when you receive a story in return, the learning and growth regions of your brain are activated.

How can we apply this to camp, school and life? If you have a child with “low grit” (someone who experiences a great deal of shame or grief) we can provide them with small structured challenges that help them to tell the story of how they positively surprised themselves in that specific moment. For example: a child who is withdrawn, overly apologetic, anxious or highly self-critical will benefit from sharing when they did something that surprised them about themselves in the moment during any given activity. As adults, we can often see that “look of wonder” or that big-eyed surprise–and, in that moment, if we can ask, “tell me what surprised you about yourself right then?” they will tell you a story. That story lays down a neural pathway in the area of the brain where grit and perseverance live.

Similarly, when children who are consistently fearful and angry, which indicates “low growth” we can immerse them in situations where they learn to listen to the stories of others and deepen their empathy and understanding. This also helps reverse the effects of technology (and the current culture as a whole) because they have to slow down and practice listening to understand versus listening to respond.

More than anything though, it is the adults who can do this themselves who have the most impact on helping children develop their own “main character energy” because they can truly listen to children’s stories and then share their own stories. It is within these intentional wonder storysharing experiences that children, teens and young adults are given opportunities to mentally scaffold their own lives into positive, character-defining experiences.

As part of their character development, we want each of them to know, “there is no hero like me.” We shouldn’t tell children who they are or who they should be–but it is our job as adults to help them open the doors of their own brains to help them see what kind of “main character energy” they can bring and, more than anything, just who they can become.