These 6 Questions Will Help You Optimize Your Influence on Kids
Parenting lessons from Japanese soccer fans, why norms have more impact than you think, and 6 questions that can help you optimize your environment for impact.
Hello, good people! I took last week off from the newsletter after a 22-hour round trip to Los Angeles for the TCU vs. Georgia NCAA Football National Championship Game. As a TCU alum, it wasn’t the outcome I’d have hoped for. Still, it was a lot of fun and amazing to see my little brother and my best friend, Justin Lind. (Many of you will be familiar with Justin from our many joint ventures). Pictures at the end for anyone interested.
Anyway, that sports event got me thinking of another…
Parenting Lessons From Japanese Soccer Fans
By now you have probably heard about how the Japanese soccer team shocked Germany at the World Cup and then, despite their hysterical excitement, the Japanese team’s fans cleaned up the stadium. This is not the first time fans from Japan have been lauded for cleaning up after a game. Such behavior has become typical of Japanese fans because it is typical of Japanese culture. In Japan, neighbors are expected to participate in regular community clean-ups and there are few public trash cans because their norms tell people to take their trash home.
By contrast, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a stadium in America after a sports event, but it pretty much looks like a giant frat party. This is even the case at small middle school and high school games. There have been many mornings after a game night where I spent an hour picking up trash in the stands, despite the fact that spectators (mostly parents) cannot leave the bleachers without walking by two giant trash cans. Similarly, teachers at my son’s school often choose not to let elementary students play on the campus’s large grass field because it is always covered in dog droppings.
Those who fail to pick up after themselves (or their dogs) aren’t necessarily bad people. They are just following the norms set by their environment. Similar to Broken Windows Theory, when people see that other people leave trash, it makes them more likely to do the same.
This is a story about the power of social proof and cultural norms. Whether good or bad, behavior is usually downstream of our social norms. If everyone in your family and friend group exercises and eats well, then you will. If none of them do, then you are far less likely to. That may seem like bad news, but it is only bad if you neglect to apply the lessons.
To influence behavior you must utilize social pressure. This is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to influencing kids!
The Best Way to Influence Our Kids
There is a reason that over 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. Most resolutions swim against the social pressure of the surrounding world. The best way to change your behavior is to find people and places where those desired behaviors are already the norm. The best way to overcome a dysfunctional culture is to find a thriving subculture. This is even more true for our children. They will take on the norms of the world around them.
If you don’t like the outcomes our culture is creating, you can’t just think your kids will do better because you are aware of the problems. Kids will still take on the norms of the world around them. They’ll naturally adopt the beliefs, mental patterns, and behaviors of the adults around them. Even more, they will adopt the beliefs, mental patterns, and behaviors of their peers. Thus, one of the most important things you can do as a parent is to find better people and subcultures to surround yourself with.
Your beliefs, mental patterns, and behaviors will be a function of those you surround yourself with. Those beliefs, mental patterns, and behaviors will then be evident in your parenting and relationships, and they will be transferred to your children. More still, if you surround yourself with better environments, you’ll invariably put your children in a position to be surrounded by better peers.
This prompts a few essential questions:
What adults do you spend the most time with?
What people do you admire that you would like to spend more time with?
How can you make that happen?
Who do you want to be? What specific goals do you have? What behaviors, beliefs, and habits are most influential for living well?
In what subcultures or places are those behaviors, beliefs, and habits more common?
How can you commit to spending more time in these places?
We’d all do well to go through this battery of questions from time to time.
The 75-25 Rule
The above questions were inspired by former monk Jay Shetty who recommends an occasional companion audit. Shetty also suggests shooting for what he calls the 75-25 rule.
Shoot to shift the ratios in your life so that you are spending 75% of the time (or more) with people you admire and who make you aspire for better and 25% of the time (or less) with those who don’t. Sometimes, you will have to be around family or co-workers whose influence in negative, but most often you can create better boundaries and find better subcultures.
It would be hard to overstate the influence that our environment has on us and, even more dramatically, the influence that environment has on our kids.
Next week, I’ll dig into more of the profound implications of this reality, along with more specific practical implications. For now, thank you for reading and sharing this with anyone who you think would find this valuable!
Life is too short to be normal.
Shane
P.S. As promised, here are pictures from my trip to LA.