Looking for a different a New Year resolution? Grow your Reasoning Attitude.

There’s a pub story about three baseball umpires talking about how they make their calls for a “ball” or a “strike”.

* Umpire 1 says: “I call them as they are”.

* Umpire 2 says: “I call them as I see them”.

* Umpire 3 says: “They ain’t nothing until I call them”.

Umpire 1 reasons the world is the same for everyone to see it.

Umpire 2 reasons the world is clearly there but each person can see it differently and make their own sense of it. (outside-in)

Umpire 3 reasons that while the world is there, we give the world its meaning for our contexts. (inside-out)

The umpire labels the pitched ball so that the game of baseball can be played in a fair context.

How is it that some people have the capability to make sense of the world and seeing the context more than others? An answer is a willingness to try and make some sense of a disruption as opposed to giving in to the need to ignore it to gain certainty.

The logic follows: If we’re born with plenty of this attitude in a brain that is designed to grow, Umpires 1&2 have lost some of their growth attitude along the way while and Umpire 3 has learned to use it in adulthood.

Therefore, growing adults is a process of getting back that some of that attitude and rediscovering the ability to grow.

In neuropsychology, there are new models of how these attitudes work and how brains grow.