{"id":32191,"date":"2023-04-03T22:48:20","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T05:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=32191"},"modified":"2023-04-03T22:48:20","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T05:48:20","slug":"and-the-winner-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/and-the-winner-is\/","title":{"rendered":"And the winner is…"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

David Rock wins the prize for \u201cMost Immediately Applicable Book We\u2019ve Read.\u201d I read Your Brain at Work <\/em>[1]\u00a0last week and sat with it before tackling this blog post (thank you, spring break, for that extra time!). In those few days, I found myself applying Rock\u2019s reflections in a surprising number of ways.

1. When I was feeling a little down, I scheduled a coffee date with a friend because \u201csocial connections are a primary need.\u201d [2]
2. Saying no to multitasking. Staying focused on each task at hand has helped eliminate some silly mistakes. No more forgetting to circle back and finish something.
3. Attempting to manipulate my dopamine level by doing a puzzle over the weekend and starting my week off with a Monday-morning run.
4. Immediately before going on said run, I reread my notes on this book. By the time I got home insight had struck in my \u201cquiet brain.\u201d [3]\u00a0
5. Most of all, I\u2019ve been reappraising everything over the past few days, looking at everything from a strained relationship to my daily routine through a new lens.

A reappraisal success story<\/strong>

It may be a bit early to tout it as a success, but Rock\u2019s work did induce significant \u201caha\u201d moment for me. Our church planting team have been feeling so stuck. We\u2019ve been seeing attrition instead of growth in our church for a while now. As discouragement has set in, we\u2019ve found it harder and harder to generate new ideas or attempt new outreaches. It\u2019s begun to feel like we\u2019re just waiting for a miraculous change, without doing anything to catalyze that.

As I read about reappraisal, I began to see our \u201cstuckness\u201d in a different way. I began to look through a lens of \u201crebuilding\u201d and that perspective shift has turned my discouragement around. We are rebuilding after saying goodbye to 2 departing team members, adding 3 babies to the team\u2019s families, and our team leader undergoing a year of cancer treatment. All this happened on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that narrowed our opportunities to incarnate the gospel in our city. Maybe we\u2019re not \u201cstuck\u201d, which implies being unable or unsuccessful at changing our current reality. Maybe we\u2019re \u201crebuilding\u201d, meaning we\u2019ve been through a lot and we\u2019re proactively moving toward a better reality. Thank you, David Rock, for this \u201cstrategy with few if any downsides, and significant upsides.\u201d

More reappraisal needed<\/strong>

Related to my NPO, the literature on positive parenting is full of this reappraisal strategy, although not usually labeled as such. For example, Isabelle Filliozat, psychologist and leader in the positive parenting movement in France, holds to the idea that children are naturally social and empathic. Children\u2019s misbehavior does not stem from an intention to hurt or disrespect their parents. They simply need our help to mature and do what is right. [4] What a change from the old (but still much repeated) perspective that a crying child is manipulating his parents.

This reappraisal by positive parenting experts is also a complete reversal of the teaching commonly found in Christian parenting manuals (especially older ones) which says a child\u2019s heart is naturally rebellious and must be taught to submit to God\u2019s authority (i.e., by means of corporal punishment). [5] This paradigm-shift will be a key threshold concept that I hope my stakeholders will wrestle with.

Why is this reappraisal so important? Our actions stem from our beliefs, so how we think about a situation (or our child, for example) can change our entire approach. I\u2019ve witnessed this in my own parenting journey and in those around me. When we think of a child as \u201cmanipulating\u201d or \u201cdisrespectful\u201d we\u2019re likely to think they need a punishment in order to be \u201ctaught a lesson.\u201d However, when we see a child as doing the best they can, wanting to do right but needing help we are more likely to act as a compassionate teacher. Over time, this threshold concept can transform the parent-child relationship, a parent\u2019s sense of thriving, and eventually a child\u2019s ability to self-regulate.

One more challenge<\/strong>

Of course, reappraisal isn\u2019t always easy. As Rock puts it, \u201cReappraisal is metabolically expensive. It\u2019s not easy to do, especially if your stage is full or your actors are tired\u2026.Without the capacity to use your full cognitive power at will, your capacity to reappraise will be limited to moments when you are well rested.\u201d [6]

That\u2019s not great news for parents because, well, what parent is well-rested? Admittedly, it is not easy to shift our perspectives on our own. But if we learned anything from Meyer and Land\u2019s writing on threshold concepts it is that the liminal state is uncomfortable. [7] BUT it is possible to push through and acquire new learning. Onward, friends!

____________________________________________________
1 Rock, David. Your Brain at Work. (New York: Harper Collins. 2009), 116.
2 Ibid. 144.
3 Ibid. 91.
4 Filliozat, Isabelle. Comprendre et \u00e9duquer son enfant: les outils concrets de la parentalit\u00e9 positive pour transformer votre quotidien. (Paris: Marabout, 2022), 37.
5 Bryant, Henry and Alice. Bien \u00catre Parents. (Lyon: \u00c9ditions Cl\u00e9s, 2005), 71.
6 Rock, David. Your Brain at Work. (New York: Harper Collins. 2009), 93.
7 Meyer, J., & Land, R. \u201cOvercoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practicing within the disciplines.\u201d London: Routledge, 2006.

<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Rock wins the prize for \u201cMost Immediately Applicable Book We\u2019ve Read.\u201d I read Your Brain at Work [1]\u00a0last week and sat with it before tackling this blog post (thank you, spring break, for that extra time!). In those few days, I found myself applying Rock\u2019s reflections in a surprising number of ways. 1. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,2681],"class_list":["post-32191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-rock","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32194,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32191\/revisions\/32194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}