Many effective altruists try to live lives to minimize world suffering. But with near endless suffering in the world and our finite capacities as humans, effective altruists can feel overwhelmed by inevitable failures to reduce suffering. This may discourage effective altruists from putting forth the effort they are capable of to prevent avoidable world suffering. How can we overcome this suboptimal outcome?
Valorie Kondos Field, the 7-time NCAA Championship winning UCLA gymnastics coach, shares her insights on this perfectionism problem with the Effective Altruists community. Miss Val, as she is affectionately known, discusses how shifting away from being a wins-focused coach transformed her failing program into a multi-championship winning team, but merely as a by-product of shifting her focus to the whole student-athlete’s being.
Miss Val’s 2019 TED Talk, “Why Winning Doesn’t Always Equal Success” has been viewed over 4 million times. Her techniques, described in her book “Life is Short, Don’t Wait to Dance”, have been lauded by everyone from Olympic Simone Biles to Mary Erdoes (CEO of JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management).
Her talk is your chance to ask Miss Val your questions.
