Developing a Better You

Tag: Center for Action and Contemplation (Page 2 of 3)

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.

The Life Lesson I Learned from “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” – Have a Point!

In the classic comedy movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Steve Martin delivers this biting line to John Candy: “When you’re telling these little stories, here’s a good idea – have a point!”

That got me thinking about my own life. Does it “have a point”? After a lot of trial and error, I can honestly say that I’ve found one – to know and be known, love and be loved, enjoy and be enjoyed by God. I believe that if I do nothing other than that, my life will have a satisfying “point.”

I completely understand that for some of you my “point” sounds unappealing or even foolish. I respect that. There are certainly many other options. Your “point” could be serving others. Family and friends. Succeeding at your career. Growing your bank account. Traveling the world. Experiencing pleasure.

Those things are all good, and I pursue them regularly. But whenever I’ve made anything other than God “the point” of my life, it eventually left me with a dissatisfaction, a restlessness, an itch I couldn’t scratch. Why is that? Maybe it’s because I was using good things in a way they were never intended, expecting more of them than they were designed to give. The philosopher Augustine put it this way: “You have made us for Yourself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” As others have framed it, humans were created with a God-shaped hole in our hearts that only God can fill. That may not describe your experience, but I’ve found it to be true for me.

I’m either a cosmic accident or I’m not. There’s either a universal design or there isn’t. Either God exists or God doesn’t. Neither side of the God debate can be proven conclusively. I believe there are compelling arguments and smart people on both sides. If these are topics you’re interested in, my advice is to familiarize yourself with the rational cases for and against, factor in your personal experience, then decide for yourself. (If you’re looking for a resource, youtube is filled with debates and lectures by the likes of Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig on belief in God and Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins representing an atheistic perspective).

Regardless of how you identify spiritually, I think we all wrestle with the same questions. Where does your heart find rest? What is your life’s “point”? Answer well and you’ll find peace, satisfaction, and meaning. And you’ll take a giant step toward Becoming Yourself.

How to Turn Your Angst into Action (part 2): Ask Life’s Most Persistent and Urgent Question

The following post is part two of a two-part series by guest author Susan Stocker, one of the co-authors of the Barmen Today Declaration. Part one (you can read it here) told Susan’s personal story of how she became the catalyst for writing the Declaration, a pledge for a more compassionate and inclusive worldview. Today she concludes with some practical insights on how to live out this commitment in your daily life and take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

In the late 1950’s Martin Luther King, Junior said that life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?”

What if this is a trick question? We have all been concentrating on “doing” for others – donating, marching in the streets, working in soup kitchens and hospital gift shops. Maybe the word “doing” threw us off. “Doing” doesn’t seem to be “doing” a whole lot, working well, or changing much.

Seven of us from Father Richard Rohr’s Living School program collaborated on a document called Barmen Today: A Contemporary, Contemplative Declaration. More than twenty-seven thousand people have signed Barmen Today, including leaders in current theological/spiritual fields. People from all walks of life and demographic groups also felt compelled to commit to the principles espoused in the declaration. (Read and sign it here)

Soon the responsible seven of us starting wondering what to “do” with this small but not insignificant group of signers. Should we plan rallies, write letters to congressmen or newspapers, have small group meetings, show up at churches and spread the news? We were concentrating on “doing” something with the others who were as interested as we were in “doing” something for others.

Then, one recent morning, in Richard Rohr’s daily meditation (found at cac.org), Cynthia Bourgeault talked about The Kingdom of Heaven and quoted Jim Marion as saying that The Kingdom of Heaven is undoubtedly a metaphor for a state of consciousness. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place you go to (after you die, up in the stars) but a place you come from (every moment of every day in your interactions with all others, including God or whatever you name the Source of all Life).

The Kingdom of Heaven–sometimes called Peace on Earth, Nirvana, Joy, Ecstasy, Equality, Justice, Mercy, Love – it goes by many names—is a way of seeing, a perceptual framework, which sees no separation between God and humans, between humans and other humans, between the lover and the beloved, between Beauty and the Beast, between those who agree with me and those with whom I disagree. I am not only my brother’s keeper; I am my brother. John Donne in a sermon in 1624 suggested we stop asking “for whom the bell tolls.” It tolls for me every time it tolls for thee.

Perhaps, then, the question of what to do with the 27,000 of us is to begin a small (but not insignificant) revolution in seeing. What if each of us concentrated on seeing with eyes that refused to discern separation, with hearts that refused to hold the hatred which is only possible when we feel separate, and with minds open to the possibility, the very real possibility, of The Kingdom of Heaven being here and now and available to all “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” as the Gnostic Gospel concludes every chapter.

Now, that would be a revolution, my friends. And we make it happen by “doing” nothing but “being” awake, alive, aware and open. Ready?

READ AND SIGN THE BARMEN TODAY DECLARATION HERE

Susan Stocker is a blogger, novelist, and Marriage and Family Therapist with Masters degrees in Communication and Counseling. She served as a mental health ambassador to China in 1998 and has volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, and many other organizations. Her published works include Only Her Naked Courage (2013), Heart 1.5 (2013), The Many Faces of Anxiety (2013), The Many Faces of PTSD (2010), and Heart (1981), as well as her blog The Many Faces of PTSD (manyfacesofptsd.wordpress.com). She is on a lifelong journey toward Becoming Herself. You can contact her at sraustocker@yahoo.com.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Becoming Yourself

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑