Have you ever had a quiet conversation with yourself that goes something like this?
Me: Are you drunk?
Also Me: No.
Me Again: I don’t think so, in fact I know so.
And, Me: Wait…what do you mean?
Have you ever had one of those out-of-body moments, or rather and out-of-mind moment, where you ask yourself what the what? In those moments, it seems that temporarily suspending the haze through either external stimulus in the form of a question, or an adverse action/reaction from our current environment whether it be from ourself or another person, is the exact freeze moment when we might consider that in all reality we might just be intoxicated.
I’ve been studying cognitive biases recently, and the way they show up in our lives. I’ve also been spending time with Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent work titled Talking to Strangers. My mind has been racing on the possible corollaries between the impact of alcohol on the brain as it relates to our surroundings, while also considering the parallel behavior and affect under the influence of our own biases. So, in an attempt to further explore my hypothesis that the two scenarios do in deed have similarities and the same self serving, and potentially damaging behavior, I reached out to my friend Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
Dr. Hardy has a PhD in Organizational Psychology and is a well known author and speaker. He is preparing to release his upcoming book titled Personality Isn’t Permanent, where he teaches the reader that rather than being defined by the past and trapped in unresolved traumas, you can build your identity and internal narrative to serve the future you desire. If you haven’t pre-ordered it yet, run, don’t walk. Again, the title is Personality Isn’t Permanent.
This is not a paid advertisement but rather a heart felt plug for a work I believe will absolutely change the world.
So, back to the quest for theoretical support, I shot Benjamin a text with this question: What impact does environmental construct have on bias myopathy, and possibly the reversal of destruction of myopic cognition?
As any good coach or teacher might do, he just simply asked me what I thought.
My answer:
Drawing conclusions from some recent reading and studying, If alcohol has a myopic effect on the mind by creating a nearsightedness and frontal spacing for the immediate belief of surrounding environment (drinking alone exacerbates loneliness, drinking in a comedy club may enhance your belief that you’re also funny), I would presume the nearsightedness of biases would have a similar reinforcement based on the construct of your environment. I believe both are altered states. By definition, myopia is defined as a lack of imagination, foresight, or intellectual insight. A myopic (blurred) bias (fixed reality), would then have a similar effect of alcohol on the individual, placing only what’s in an immediate frontal space into an enhanced or exacerbated reinforcement of presumed reality.
I reached out to Dr. Hardy because of his work in environmental construct, and I proposed to him in our conversation that I believe the chance for bias de-construct could be made possible through intentional environmental construct and new habit formation.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers he states: “If you are blind to the ideas that underlie our mistakes with strangers, and to the institution and practices that we construct around those ideas, then all you are left with is the personal” and upon further exploration he closes with this question and statement: “Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.”
To say my mind is racing would be an understatement. This concept and more importantly the understanding of how entrenched one can become in their own biases as well as the possibility that through effective environmental construct and habit formation one can actually create a space for bias destruction to further unlock ones ability to grow and develop.
If so, then where does adaptive affect come into the picture? I would suspect that some biases are adaptive and contagious based on environmental construct. I would suspect that some of these biases develop unknowingly and through extended exposure to a particular environment. We’ll have to save that conversation for another day.
In closing, the more I understand my own biases, and observe the biases of those around me, the more I realize that we are all too often intoxicated in and by our own cognition. The myopic impact of biases both conscious and unconscious can and most often blind us from the possibilities of growth. If we are to intentionally create a disruption, what external event could we create to draw a clear and reckoning awareness of our limiting biases?
Until next week my friends, may you find joy in the journey as you learn to honor.the.gift.
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