Facilitator Notes for Session 1: Being Wrong

Purpose of this session:

Introduce humility by helping participants notice their reactions to being wrong, and establish a shared covenant that creates emotional safety for the journey ahead.

Emotional landscape:

Participants may feel embarrassment, defensiveness, shame, or anxiety around mistakes. Some may minimize wrongness; others may over-own it.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Normalize discomfort as part of growth
  • Encourage curiosity over justification
  • Keep focus on experience rather than correctness
  • Establish group norms collaboratively through covenant creation

Watch-outs:

  • Early debates or intellectual sparring
  • Self-shaming language
  • Pressure to perform insight

Covenant Creation (Essential in Session 1)

Before deep discussion begins, invite the group to co-create a covenant for how they will engage one another throughout the course.

Suggested framing:

“This course works best when we agree on how we’ll treat one another — especially when conversations are uncomfortable or emotional. Let’s create a simple covenant together.”

Common elements to invite (not prescribe):

  • Speak from personal experience (“I” statements)
  • Respect confidentiality
  • Allow silence and passing
  • Listen without fixing or debating
  • Honor different experiences
  • Be gentle with ourselves and others

Write the covenant where everyone can see it and revisit briefly each session if needed.

Helpful prompts if discussion stalls:

  • “What happens in your body when you realize you’re wrong?”
  • “What do you usually do next — explain, withdraw, get quiet, push back?”
  • “How might humility change those moments?”

It does feel like something to be wrong. It feels like being right. -– Kathryn Schulz

Facilitator Notes for Session 2: Being Vulnerable

Purpose of this session:

Help participants understand vulnerability as openness to uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure — and its relationship to connection and courage.

Emotional landscape:

This session may stir fear of rejection, past wounds, shame, or discomfort with emotional exposure. Some may equate vulnerability with weakness; others may overshare.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Emphasize vulnerability as choice, not forced disclosure
  • Protect against pressure to share personal stories
  • Encourage noticing emotional responses rather than narrating trauma
  • Keep discussion grounded in present experience

Watch-outs:

  • Participants feeling obligated to disclose painful experiences
  • Others offering advice or “fixing” responses
  • Confusing vulnerability with emotional dumping

Helpful prompts:

  • “Where did you feel tension or resistance in today’s videos?”
  • “What does vulnerability look like in everyday moments for you?”
  • “How does vulnerability connect to empathy and humility?”

Connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. – Brene Brown

Facilitator Notes for Session 3: Being Rejected

Purpose of this session:

Help participants notice how rejection shapes behavior (avoidance, defensiveness, performing, withdrawing) and how HECK can be practiced in response.

Emotional landscape:

This session may touch shame, exclusion, bullying, family rejection, workplace rejection, and identity-based rejection.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Keep the group out of “ranking pain” or comparing whose rejection was worse.
  • Normalize passing. Encourage speaking from “I” experience.
  • Redirect advice-giving: “Let’s stay with listening and honoring.”

Watch-outs

  • Some participants may minimize their own experiences (“It wasn’t that bad”)—invite gentle self-compassion without pushing disclosure.
  • Some may generalize about groups (“Those people always…”)—bring it back to story and impact.

Helpful prompts (if discussion stalls)

  • “Where did you feel yourself tighten up or withdraw in this session?”
  • “What would HECK look like toward yourself in moments of rejection?”
  • “How can empathy exist without fixing or rescuing?”

I found that people who really change the world… — Jia Jiang

Facilitator Notes for Session 4: Being Grateful

Purpose of this session:

Connect gratitude to humility and kindness without forcing positivity.

Emotional landscape:

Gratitude can be complicated for those in grief, depression, chronic pain, or exhaustion; it can also trigger guilt (“I should be grateful”).

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Protect participants from “gratitude policing.”
  • Make room for honest mixed feelings: gratitude and ache can coexist.
  • Encourage concrete examples over abstract statements.

Watch-outs

  • If gratitude becomes performative, invite specificity: “What are you grateful for today, in a real way?”
  • If the group slips into denial of suffering, anchor back to compassion: “Gratitude doesn’t erase hardship.”

Helpful prompts

  • “Where does gratitude soften you?”
  • “Where does gratitude feel inaccessible—and what does compassion look like there?”
  • “How does gratitude change the way you treat people this week?”

It is not happiness that makes us grateful… — David Steindl

Facilitator Notes for Session 5: Being Broken

Purpose of this session:

Invite participants to recognize brokenness as part of the human experience — shaped by harm, mistakes, and suffering — without rushing toward fixing or redemption.

Emotional landscape:

This session may surface grief, shame, trauma, anger, or long-held pain.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Slow the pace — silence is helpful
  • Encourage witnessing rather than analyzing
  • Normalize stepping back or opting out
  • Keep focus on awareness and compassion, not solutions

Watch-outs:

  • Comparing pain or ranking suffering
  • Offering advice or spiritual platitudes
  • Rushing toward “everything happens for a reason” narratives

Containment Plan (strongly recommended)

  • Remind participants of permissions to pass and step out
  • After each video: 30–60 seconds of silence
  • Begin discussion with inner noticing before interpretation
  • Redirect fixing language gently

Helpful prompts:

  • “What did you notice in yourself while watching?”
  • “Where did you feel heaviness, resistance, or emotion?”
  • “How might compassion look toward yourself here?”

We are graduating members from the class of We Made It… — Shane Koyczan

Facilitator Notes for Session 6: Being Self-Aware

Purpose of this session:

Strengthen self-awareness as the “hinge” virtue that supports humility, empathy, compassion, and kindness.

Emotional landscape:

Self-awareness can evoke shame or self-criticism.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Encourage curiosity over self-judgment.
  • Watch for participants turning awareness into self-attack.
  • Balance honesty with gentleness.

Helpful prompts

  • “What did you learn about your patterns this week?”
  • “What helps you notice yourself without collapsing into shame?”
  • “How did increased awareness change a real interaction?”

Living a meaningful life takes work… — Emily Espahani Smith

Facilitator Notes for Session 7: Being Authentic

Purpose of this session:

Explore authenticity as integrity and narrative complexity—not exposure for exposure’s sake.

Emotional landscape:

Authenticity touches identity and belonging.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Make clear: authenticity does not require disclosure.
  • Protect against pressure to “share your story.”
  • Encourage authenticity with boundaries.

Watch-outs

  • If authenticity becomes bluntness, ask about kindness.
  • If pressure to reveal arises, normalize passing.

What if, in these heated moments, we chose dialogue over debate?… — Lauran Arledge

Facilitator Notes for Session 8: Being the Change

Purpose of this session:

Translate inner formation into sustainable action.

Emotional landscape:

Endings bring mixed feelings.

Facilitation emphasis:

  • Avoid performance or grandiosity.
  • Normalize imperfection.
  • Emphasize small commitments.

Closing recommendation

Use a closing practice that feels like blessing or release.

The world will say to you, “Be a better person.”… — Cleo Wade