Conduct the Experiment -
My experiment was, well, simple.
I had a piece of poster board on which I'd written "FAILURE" and a few other words. "Failure" and these other words, all of which pertained to "failure" except for "bees", seems to be at the root of my fears. I'm afraid of letting people down, disappointing my peers, "not being good enough", not being accepted... and it all boils down to that one word.
So I rambled about this briefly to the class and then took the posterboard and laid it on the ground. On top of this, I set a collection of markers. I then invited everyone to write their own fears down on this poster--to let out those secret fears and to put my fears and their fears in perspective. We're all afraid of something, so why should we let it drag us down?
I predicted that a few people would do it, but I thought it might take a bit of time before people felt more comfortable to get down on the floor and draw or write on my poster.
I was wrong.
I was very surprised by the seeming eagerness of everyone. Nearly every person in the class surged forward at the same time and grabbed a spot on the poster. The couple of people who waited behind eventually joined once there was room for them.
Given the opportunity, I would love to see this expanded. Make it a mural and give everyone more time and more media to choose from to contribute to this. Afterwards, I would have liked to take a can of spray paint and paint the whole board white again--symbolically "cleaning" our fears from our minds and freeing us to be creative in our own way on a blank canvas.
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