If you’ve ever wished for a magic wand that could nudge your life—or someone else’s—in a different direction, Gregory Walton, ’00, has good news for you. In his new book, Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts, Walton, a professor of psychology at Stanford, lays out the simple, often imperceptible worries that influence what we believe, how we react, and what comes next. Then, he shows us ways to propel ourselves and others upward.
Throughout life, Walton writes, but particularly during transitions (starting college, taking a new job, ending a relationship), we ask ourselves core questions: Who am I? Do I belong? Can I do this? Answers that play into our worries can cause us to spiral down, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes we’ve plucked out just one possible answer. “We gaslight ourselves,” Walton writes. Maybe you’ve started a new job that people “like you” aren’t often hired for. Based on your past experiences and the stereotypes you know exist, you would likely be grappling (maybe subconsciously) with a worry: Can I do this job? When your first project draws criticism from a colleague, you might be primed to take that small interaction as evidence that the stereotypes are right. Walton calls this a tifbit—tiny fact, big theory. Your worries are reasonable and normal in your situation. But our tendency to take a tiny fact and apply it to a big theory (I can’t do this job) sets us up to help make that theory come true. “When we’re working toward goals big or small,” Walton writes, “it’s inevitable that we’ll encounter roadblocks along the way. To keep going, we can’t treat those roadblocks as proof we don’t have what it takes.”
“At their heart, all relationships are is spirals. How I think about and behave toward you shapes how you think about and behave back toward me.”
When the facts we find help us set aside such worries, however, we can spiral up and chart new paths for ourselves or others. In a study, Walton found that a one-hour session for new college students that normalized worries of belonging—and showed that those worries dissipated over time—improved participants’ lives (more interaction with professors, higher graduation rates, greater career satisfaction) a full 10 years later. “All the belonging exercise did was help students address a question they faced,” Walton writes. With their worries subdued, “students could begin the work of college.” They studied hard, joined student groups, and attended office hours. “Students’ efforts, skills, confidence, and relationships could grow in tandem. That’s spiraling up.”
The events that cause those upward spirals are ordinary magic, Walton says. They are everyday experiences that help us to set aside our worries so that we can steer our lives in the direction we desire. And we can learn to wield that magic. Ordinary Magic offers opportunities to think deeply about how people from different points of view can interpret the same event in varied and consequential ways. And it provides nonfantastical inspiration to improve ourselves and our communities. No magic wand required.
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the deputy and digital editor of Stanford. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
