{"id":37589,"date":"2024-04-17T18:53:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T01:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37589"},"modified":"2024-04-17T18:53:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T01:53:42","slug":"pass-it-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pass-it-along\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass It Along"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coaching Little League baseball in the United States is both a challenging and fascinating sociological experience. On the one hand, you have the challenge of breaking down the complexities of baseball into “bite-sized,” understandable chunks. Seeking to find a clear and compelling way to explain to a 10-year-old that they cannot just keep running around the bases as much as they want, interrupted by the question, \u201cWhy?\u201d To \"\"<\/a>which you respond, \u201cYou\u2019ll get out.\u201d Followed by the natural question, \u201cWhy?\u201d Exchanges like these are commonplace. With the challenges, you also have the opportunity to observe adults as they navigate while watching their children learn baseball. It is fascinating how some parents approach the game as a way to live vicariously through their children\u2019s experiences. Trying to relive the glory days or perhaps succeeding where they once failed. In parenting, as well as any leadership endeavor, we have an opportunity to help people along. Give them advice and insight into what we wish we would have known. Many conversations with my kids involve statements like, \u201cI wish I would have known\u2026\u201d or \u201cI wish I would have learned ____ sooner.\u201d In his book, \u201cClear Thinking,\u201d Shane Parrish gives the reader many opportunities to exclaim, \u201cI wish I would have known that sooner!\u201d Full of helpful and pithy one-liners, Parrish offers the reader a perspective on thinking more clearly and making better decisions. In this post, I will consider one primary concept from the book and one helpful strategy for success.<\/p>\n

Ego Death<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early in the book, Parrish identifies enemies of clear thinking. Among these enemies, he focuses on four as the most important. He calls them the emotional default, the ego default, the social default, and the inertia default. To mitigate these defaults, he identifies four key strengths that offer the power to overcome our defaults, allowing us to think more clearly and make good decisions. These four key strengths are self-accountability, self-knowledge, self-control, and self-confidence. While I would enjoy discussing, to a greater degree, all the defaults and strengths introduced, given the parameters of this post, I will focus on the ego default and a couple of techniques offered to subdue it.<\/p>\n

Parrish Explains how the ego default essentially functions by stating, \u201cWe tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy.\u201d What Parrish refers to as the ego default, David Rock refers to as a biological survival instinct whereby the brain tries to maintain a high social status within a group. To overcome this natural response, we must understand some of its nuances. Our ego default is one in which our desire to feel right is at the expense of actually being right. We will spend time and energy trying to prove our idea is best, even if it is not. This reveals the absence of a critical ingredient in leadership: Humility. Much like the second phase described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero\u2019s Journey, to overcome the ego default, we need to experience an ego death. The initial step in the right direction is knowing and admitting our weaknesses.<\/p>\n

I Don\u2019t Eat Sugar<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, admitting weakness is not enough if we want to be more effective thinkers. Parrish contends that if you do not take steps to manage weakness and blind spots, we will go with the defaults mentioned earlier. He suggests that establishing safeguards will help us manage our defaults. One suggested safeguard is establishing new behaviors to help us achieve our goals. \"\"<\/a>Think of the new behaviors as Automatic Rules for Success. Using automatic rules can help us resist our default’s automatic responses. One way I have seen this play out in my own life is after learning of the effects of added sugar on my body through my cancer journey; I made a rule that I don\u2019t eat anything with added sugar. Sobered by the nutritional threat, it was easy to make the rule. At first, people were shocked by the rule, and many responded in disbelief that I would never eat food with added sugar again. After 6 years, people don\u2019t apply pressure, and many friends enjoy finding ways to help me enjoy a dessert free from added sugar. My goal was ongoing health. I had a history of unhealthy eating and making diet choices only to fail. True to Parrish\u2019s point, rules can help us automate our behavior to achieve success in accomplishing goals.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clear thinking requires knowing our defaults and deploying helpful strategies for managing and overcoming our weaknesses related to those defaults. Parrish does a good job of passing along several ideas I wish I had known earlier in life. Another one of those insights I would unpack if space allowed is wanting what matters\u2014understanding the difference between knowing how to get what you want and knowing what is worth wanting.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

[1] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results<\/em>, (London, UK: Cornerstone Press, 2023).<\/p>\n

[2] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 10.<\/p>\n

[3] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 41.<\/p>\n

[4] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 10.<\/p>\n

[5] David Rock, <\/span>You Brain At Work<\/span><\/i>, (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 132.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] Joseph Campbell, <\/span>The Hero with a Thousand Faces <\/span><\/i>(Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2020).<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 96.<\/p>\n

[8] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 103.<\/p>\n

[9] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 221.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coaching Little League baseball in the United States is both a challenging and fascinating sociological experience. On the one hand, you have the challenge of breaking down the complexities of baseball into “bite-sized,” understandable chunks. Seeking to find a clear and compelling way to explain to a 10-year-old that they cannot just keep running around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"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":[1],"tags":[3178],"class_list":["post-37589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03-parrish","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37589","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\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37592,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37589\/revisions\/37592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}