Microsoft Word - Integration One.docx How I Treat People, Determine Truth, and Grow People have many reasons for doing things. People do things because they make them happy, the do things because they were told to, they do things because they think it’s the right thing to do, and a myriad of other reasons. However, there are things that influence almost every decision a person makes and that is a person’s root beliefs. A person’s root beliefs are what tell them what their priorities should be and what choices they should make. For example, a person who thinks being vulnerable is really important, such as Brené Brown, could have a core belief of “I believe I grow by being vulnerable.” which would then tell them that it should be a priority for them to be vulnerable and they would make decisions that lead them to that. (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One) For me I have three root beliefs. The first is that I believe that people should be treated kindly. The second is that I believe that I pursue truth through reason. Finally, the third is that I believe I grow by learning from my actions. My first root belief is that I believe that people should be treated kindly. This isn’t exactly the most original root belief, but I think I can provide unique commentary on it. With regards to where this belief comes from for me, it comes from a couple places. The first place it comes from is my morals because I believe it would be morally wrong to not at least try to be kind to everyone. The second place is my experiences with kindness and a lack thereof. I’ve met a lot of people throughout my life and had to make new friends very often because of how much I moved. Many of the people I met were kind to me and were good friends to me but, there were also times where people didn’t extend any form of kindness towards me despite my efforts to be kind towards them. Like we learned in week 4, it hurts to be in unhealthy relationships but, while I was in these relationships I did at least learn to be kind to everyone so I don’t make other people feel the way I did. ("5 Signs You’re in a Toxic Friendship” by Olivia T. Taylor - Moreau FYE Week Four) This root belief influences how I interact with people by making me try to be kind to everyone I meet. My second is that I believe that I pursue truth through reason. With the origins of this belief, I can draw from the Where I’m From poems from week 5 because this comes from my upbringing and how my parents raised me. ("Where I'm From” by George Ella Lyon - Moreau FYE Week Five) My parents have always told me that truth is found through facts and reason and without them you can’t find the truth. There have actually been multiple weeks in the course where the content has been related to this belief. In week 7 we covered implicit bias and how to try and not fall into our biases which is very heavily linked to my belief because reason and facts are the best way to overcome those biases. (“How to Think About 'Implicit Bias' by Keith Payne, Laura Niemi, and John M. Doris - Moreau FYE Week Seven) There was also a correlation between the class content and my belief in week 6 when Fr. Grove talked about the two Notre Dames and how both faith and reason together are important. (“Two Notre Dames: Your Holy Cross Education” by Fr. Kevin Grove - Moreau FYE Week Six) The interesting thing though is that Fr. Grove’s message is actually in contrast with my belief. Fr. Grove says that faith and reason need to work together to achieve things but, my belief compels me to say that reason is the only thing necessary, especially when it comes to the discovery of truth. Albert Einstein didn’t use faith to discover his equation for energy, juries don’t use faith to determine guilt or innocence, buildings aren’t erected because of faith. Faith, more often than not, gets in the way of reason which is why my belief is that it is just reason that determines truth and not reason and faith. My third is that I believe I grow by learning from my actions. In week 2 we took the character strength survey. (“VIA Character Strengths Survey” by VIA Adult Survey - Moreau FYE Week Two) This was important to my belief because knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are is a good way to know what you need to do to grow. Typically, though, you will discover these things through your actions. If you take a math class and do poorly it will not be fun, but you could come out of it learning that you need to grow as a student. If you lose a race to a friend, you could learn you need to get out and exercise more. Another thing is you could have a strenuous relationship with a family member, and you learn that you need to work on your social/relationship skills. In week 3 we learned about how Notre Dame students grew in their relationships with people once they found faith which shows that my belief is good because they learned from their actions that they had room to grow, they grew through their faith, and ended up fixing the thing that led them to want to grow. (“Student Reflections on Faith” by Campus Ministry - Moreau FYE Week Three) Root beliefs are important. They shape how people make decisions and determine their priorities. Without our root beliefs we wouldn’t be able to make important decisions about our lives. For me, those ever-important root beliefs that shape my decisions, priorities, and life in general, are “I believe that people should be treated kindly”, “I believe that I pursue truth through reason”, and “I believe I grow by learning from my actions”.