Developing a Better You

Tag: best self (Page 5 of 17)

How to Find Peace with Your Past: Release and Reclaim

Now that both my parents and I are fully vaccinated, I’m heading to see them for the first time in almost a year and a half. My upcoming trip reminded me of a piece I originally posted in January of 2020, before the pandemic really took hold. The lessons I learned then have new things to teach me as we begin to move toward this post-coronavirus season. I hope they help you on your way to Becoming Yourself.

I traveled back to my Michigan hometown over the holidays to visit family. Slept in my childhood bedroom at my parents house. Watched the sun set behind the woods where I used to play. Drove past my old elementary school and the house where I was born. Had lunch with my best friend from high school whom I hadn’t seen in twenty-five years.

My elementary school

I’ve gone through a lot of changes since I moved away for good twenty-nine years ago. I’ve graduated college, gotten married, raised two kids, lived in three different cities in two other states, retired from one career and started another.

Going back to where I grew up always brings a strange mix of emotions, a sense of both deep familiarity yet utter foreignness at the same time. Nearly thirty years of life experiences have changed me. I’m not the same person anymore. I had the melancholy realization that in some sense, I truly can’t go home again.

The driveway where my dad taught me to play basketball

I find that many things that used to serve me well there are no longer helpful. Certain relationships, rituals, and activities have run their course, completed their formative work. It’s time to let them go. To move on. There are people I no longer need to see, books I no longer need to read, places I no longer need to visit. In order to progress on my personal development journey, these are the parts of my past I need to release.

Other pieces of my past can still aid in my growth. Things I’ve forgotten or let drift away in the busyness of life. Like reconnecting with Gary, my high school best friend. After twenty-five years, I’m not sure what made me track down his contact info and invite him to lunch while I was in town, but I’m so glad I did. Reminiscing with him about all that we’d experienced together in those formative years and sharing the paths our adult lives had taken energized my soul. It reminded me of who I was then in a way that helped me understand who I am now and clarify who I want to become. This is a part of my past that I can reclaim.

The woods behind my parents house where I used to explore

So how about you? What parts of your past do you need to let go of? What relationships or habits or memories are dragging you down, serving only as unwanted anchors, unhealthy reminders of who you were? Release them. What parts of your past do you need to reconnect with, good aspects that you’ve forgotten, things that can deepen and strengthen and stabilize your present? Which relationships or habits or memories can serve as anchoring roots enabling you to grow higher and farther in the future? Reclaim them. If you do, you’ll find peace with your past and take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

What an Upside Down Pyramid Taught Me About Perspective

I live across from an upside down pyramid.

On a recent nighttime stroll, I stood with my back to the building and looked up at wall sloping out over my head.

To my surprise, I slowly started leaning forward from my ankles to the point where I had to catch my balance. It was completely subconscious. Experimentally, I righted myself and looked up again. The same experience occurred, as if an invisible hand was pulling me forward while my feet remained planted. I realized the unusual slope of the wall above me was tricking my perspective, forcing my brain to compensate by leaning my body to match the angle.

It got me thinking about the power of perspective. A false perspective can fool our minds, manipulating us in ways far more subtle than I experienced with the pyramid. It can lead us to adopt beliefs that aren’t true because they’re based on poor data. This highlights the importance of being committed to facts and truth. Inaccurate perspectives – about ourselves, others, and the world – can have a dramatically negative impact on our quality of life and on the lives of those around us. They can make us angry, jealous, arrogant, entitled, depressed, the list goes on.

So how do we find and maintain an accurate perspective? Here are some suggestions:

  1. Be aware of your tendency to have a false perspective. It’s not just you. It happens to all of us.
  1. Seek out and consider a variety of perspectives from reputable sources. Read, watch, and listen to people who see the world differently than you.
  1. Accept truth even if it means changing your perspective. Burying your head in the sand when you discover facts you don’t like just makes your head dirty.
  1. Practice a daily refocusing habit – meditation, podcasts, prayer, reading, etc. Something that realigns your perspective and gets you back on course from your inevitable drift. I have a morning routine of meditation, prayer, and spiritual reading that I find hugely helpful.

Where to Begin

If you’re wondering where to begin, start by examining your current worldview, the foundational way you perceive life, others, and yourself. What lens do you look through to see the world? What ground do you stand on? We all ground ourselves somewhere and believe in something, whether we acknowledge it or not. It could be in yourself, another person, your career, financial stability, pursing pleasure, helping others, etc. Personally, I find my deepest grounding in my relationship with God. Not in the trappings of any one religion per se, but in God Herself. What grounds us is foundational to our sense of identity and informs our biases, both of which significantly impact our perspective (for more info, see my posts on Identity and Biases)

Examining your perspective choices can bring further clarity. Do you see the glass as half-full or half-empty? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you see yourself as a victim or as being responsible for your own experience? I’m not lobbying for only the “right” answer here – optimism needs to be balanced with realism and personal responsibility balanced with acknowledging your trauma. The trick is not to get trapped on the dark side of the equation and let it control your perspective.

So how about you? How do you perceive yourself? Others? The world? Where might “slanted walls” be throwing off your perspective? Keep your radar up. Consider different points of view. Be willing to change your perspective. Adopt a regular refocusing habit. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

13 Implicit Biases That Torpedo Your Personal Growth

I hate realizing I’m wrong.

It’s embarrassing. It’s humbling. It makes me feel like I’ve failed somehow. And it’s completely necessary if I want to grow.

I was reminded of that fact recently when I read a post highlighting author and speaker Brian McLaren’s work on implicit biases (you can read the full post here). Implicit biases are subconscious beliefs we hold about life, ourselves, and other people that impact our worldview.

The insidious nature of implicit biases are that they wield tremendous power over our lives, yet we don’t even know they exist. It’s like looking through tinted sunglasses that distort the color of everything we see, but we don’t know we’re wearing them. We’re convinced we’re seeing things as they really are.

As I read this post, it did more than convict me of my own implicit biases (Comfort Bias – ouch). It helped me understand how reasonable, intelligent people can be so divided on so many issues—political, cultural, social, religious, you name it. We’re looking at the same facts but seeing very different things, in large part because of our implicit biases.

Check out the list of common biases that Brian McLaren outlines below. Can you look at yourself honestly enough to see yours? He writes:

“People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.

Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.”*

So how about you? What biases have tripped you up in the past? Which might be affecting you now? Take an honest look in the mirror. Acknowledge what you see. Forgive yourself. Read / listen to (podcasts or news outlets) / talk with people who have a different perspective. Commit to having your beliefs, words, and actions match your renewed awareness. If you do, you’ll help heal our social divide, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

* From Brian McLaren, Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself) (Self-published: 2019), e-book, as shared by Richard Rohr in his daily meditation March 1, 2021 for the Center for Action and Contemplation at cac.org.

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