Living in suburban areas, having a vehicle is a necessity. I will never forget how a lifelong friend of mine called me up, asking if I could assist him as his car was having mechanical difficulties. He asked me to follow him to the mechanic, drop his vehicle off, take him to work and be the point of contact for when the mechanic calls. It was a Friday, he also was the coach of a 7th grade girls softball team and worked a job where cell phones were not permitted except at lunch. The mechanic would later call me, giving me the diagnostic results while requesting permisssion to do the repairs. Consenting on my friend’s behalf, he later called me to tell me the repairs were complete. I sent a text to my friend telling him that the car was done and he could go and pick it up when he got off work. No problem, right?<\/p>\n
Around 5:30 in the afternoon my friend calls me back frantically and yelling, Daren the shop is closed for the weekend and no one is this there!!! I replied, I told you the shop closed at 4:30pm. He yells back no you did not, Looking at my text I saw embarassingly I actually typed 5:30pm instead of 4:30pm. The worst part is he needed his vehicle to transport the kids for a softball tournament that weekend and he had no way of getting him or the kids there. Consequently, I later rented him a large-size SUV at my expense so he and the kids could go play in the tournament.<\/span> I made a huge mistake, but thankfully, we all were able to overcome it.<\/span><\/p>\n Handling Mistakes is a matter Shane Parrish tackles in his book Clear Thinking. Parrish’s writing centers on the skills needed for clear thinking. The first section <\/span>identifies the enemies of clear thinking and how we can create space. The second section deals with the practical application associated with clear thinking. The book, full of practical advice, is broken up into five parts (The enemies of clear thinking, building strength, managing weakness, decisions, and wanting what matters).<\/span> As there is much to unpack, I would like to focus my thoughts on the section on handling mistakes. Why? It seems as though understanding and wrongness have served as dominant themes all semester. <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to mistakes, Parrish asserts they present us with a choice; “whether to update your ideas or ignore the failure they’ve produced and keep believing what you have always believed.”[1]\u00a0 Looking back at my incident with my friend at the car dealership, I had a choice. I could have said I was wrong, but instead by renting him a car, I was looking at the failure I produced. I felt horrible, embarassed, panicked and not like a true friend in that moment. I failed my friend. When we think about it, no one desires to fail, and no one wants to produce failure.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps the negative feelings associated with failure are actually what people are attempting to ignore, more than the failure itself. Parrish gives us his take. <\/span>“Many people don’t want to hear that their ideas are wrong.”[2] <\/em><\/span>This aligns with Robert Duffy’s mode of thought who says it’s more than ideas. In <\/span>Why We’re Wrong in Nearly Everything he suggests, “m<\/em><\/span>any of us got lots of basic social and political facts very wrong”[3]. Mistakes are bound to happen, as opposed to making them, handling them is a higher responsibility.<\/span> Parrish contends that not just hearing but also seeing leads to correcting. <\/span>“If you want to see what you are thinking is wrong you need to make it visible.”[4]\u00a0 <\/em><\/span>Looking back I can clearly see the error of my ways via text because it was in black and white (and blue\/ iphone). In pondering this point I am left to consider how I have missed the mark in my mistakes by not making them visible. Not wanting them out there has left me caught many times. <\/span><\/p>\n “All successful execution in the world is worthless if it\u2019s not the service of the right outcome.” Parrish also offers 4 steps to handling our mistakes better to his readers: <\/span><\/p>\n As I agree with Parrish’s steps of corrrection, his <\/span>premise of turning ordinary moments into extraordinary\u00a0<\/span>results leads me to a thought he does not quite unpack. I would like to know if these are all the strategies he utilizes amidst a cancel culture society? With so many people on pins and needles, there is a growing attempt to avoid and hide making costly mistakes. Notwithstanding, this is a great and clear read to improve our thinking and reacting. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results<\/em>, (London, UK: Cornerstone Press, 2023).115.<\/p>\n [2] Parrish, Clear Thinking<\/em>, 114.<\/p>\n [3] Bobby Duffy, <\/span>Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding<\/span>, First US edition (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 221.<\/span><\/p>\n [4] Parrish, Clear Thinking, 114<\/p>\n [5] Parrish, Clear Thinking 116-17<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Living in suburban areas, having a vehicle is a necessity. I will never forget how a lifelong friend of mine called me up, asking if I could assist him as his car was having mechanical difficulties. He asked me to follow him to the mechanic, drop his vehicle off, take him to work and be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"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-37598","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\/37598","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\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37600,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37598\/revisions\/37600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n