Monthly Musing: On Contradiction...

At 8:02 on a Monday morning, on my way to work, an app a friend had recommended to me sent me a notification urging me not to lose my streak.

I found myself chuckling.

Throughout the day it sends gentle little affirmations like "I am deserving of my own kindness," "I choose gratitude," and "I am enough." They're thoughtful reminders to pause, engage and bring my head back to where my feet are. More often than not, they arrive at just the right moment.

On a different day, that notification might have landed very differently. Years ago, I suspect it would have. That morning, though, I felt no need to act on it. Instead of opening the app to reassure myself – or simply to keep the streak alive – I found myself sitting with the contradiction instead.

At exactly the same moment it appeared, India.Arie was singing I Am Light through my headphones. The juxtaposition was almost too perfect. Here was a song reminding me that I am not my fears, my mistakes or my achievements, whilst an app built around cultivating self-worth from within was quietly encouraging me not to lose an external measure.

I understand exactly why the streak exists. It encourages us to come back, helps build habits and keeps us engaged. In most apps, that makes perfect sense.

What fascinated me was the incongruence.

The affirmations gently encourage us to cultivate an internal sense of self-worth, whilst the streak quietly ties that same sense of wellbeing to an external measure.

Is my worth really determined by how many consecutive days I've opened an app?

Of course not.

And yet, there it was – an external measure quietly attached to something the app was encouraging me to cultivate from within.

The app wasn't judging me. It couldn't be. It's simply a collection of code. It has no thoughts, no feelings and no opinion about me whatsoever. Yet, on the wrong day, something entirely incapable of judgement could still influence how I felt about myself.

That struck me as wonderfully absurd.

And, perhaps, wonderfully human.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether the app was simply reflecting something much bigger.

We seem increasingly comfortable using the language of wellbeing, belonging and intrinsic motivation whilst relying on systems built around measurement, compliance and external reward. That's rarely because people don't believe what they're saying. More often, it's because the systems we're working within ask us to demonstrate things that can be counted, whilst many of the things we value most are much harder to measure.

Schools know this tension well.

The pressure to evidence progress is real. Attendance, attainment, behaviour and accountability all matter. Schools are rightly expected to demonstrate outcomes. Increasingly, many are working incredibly hard to look beyond the numbers too. The challenge comes when the measures begin to eclipse the meaning.

Attendance, on its own, cannot explain why a child is finding school so difficult to attend. Behaviour, on its own, tells us what is happening, but without curiosity it can never tell the whole story. SATs, on their own, cannot capture belonging, psychological safety or the quiet confidence of a child who finally feels safe enough to ask for help.

The measures aren't the problem.

They tell us what.

Curiosity helps us understand why.

Perhaps the contradiction appears when the measure quietly becomes the message.

Children don't simply learn from what we tell them. They learn from what we repeatedly communicate. If we tell them they belong whilst creating experiences that leave belonging feeling conditional, they learn that belonging is conditional. If we tell them mistakes are part of learning whilst making mistakes feel unsafe, they learn that mistakes are to be avoided. If we tell them they matter whilst allowing measures to become more important than meaning, they learn what really matters – not because we intended to teach those lessons, but because our methods often speak louder than our words.

I've spent years saying that all behaviour is communication. Usually I'm talking about children. Sometimes parents. Occasionally schools or systems. Over the years, I've discovered that the same curiosity is just as important when I turn it towards myself.

Perhaps that's why the contradiction has stayed with me.

Not because of an app.

Not because of a streak.

But because it quietly asked a much bigger question.

What are we really communicating?

If all behaviour is communication, perhaps it's worth paying a little more attention to what our methods are communicating too.