Recognising your defaults is the first move. The second is building the internal resources that let you override them consistently — not just once, but especially when it is hard. Parrish identifies four strengths that separate people who default from people who decide: Self-Accountability: you take ownership of your outcomes rather than explaining them away. When something goes wrong, your first question is what you could have done differently, not whose fault it was. This does not mean blaming yourself for everything — it means treating yourself as someone who influences outcomes rather than someone things just happen to. Self-Knowledge: you understand your own patterns. You know which situations trigger your emotion default. You know when your ego is threatened. You know the conditions under which you make bad calls. This knowledge is not abstract — it is built by paying attention to how you actually behave, not how you think you behave. Self-Control: you can manage impulses in the moment. The pause between stimulus and response is only useful if you can hold it open long enough to think. Self-control is the muscle that keeps that space available under pressure. Self-Confidence: you are willing to act on your own judgement even when others disagree. Not arrogance — the kind of quiet confidence that comes from having done the work to know your own thinking is sound. These four do not come automatically. They are built through deliberate practice, and they compound over time.