Can Life Lessons Be Taught?

When my mentor, Norm Ferzoco, died I felt a strong sense of responsibility to pay his mentoring forward. Despite freely honoring his legacy for the past two years, I have been deeply pondering whether we can actually spare others from the wounds we bore (and sometimes inflicted) on the battlefield of life.

As I reflect upon whether my roles as a leader, mentor and teacher make a difference, I keep circling back to the quotation that I use in lieu of a long bio when leading training sessions:

Experience is the name that we have given our MISTAKES.~unknown.

I follow by saying…and I have a lot of experience. Of course, meaning twenty-plus years of mistakes!

But IS it possible to relay hard-earned wisdom (mistakes) to shorten learning curves and prevent painful pitfalls, bumps and bruises OR must people learn from the direct experience of their own mistakes?

Consider these “top-of-mind” life lessons along with your own to test your theory:

1. People may not remember the specifics of what we do or say (or even our names) but they never forget how we made them feel.

2. Our most important learning often occurs during adversity or times of great duress; or the opposite of when we are, as the saying goes, “fat, dumb and happy”.

3. We rarely know how important family is, or find out whom our real friends are, until we are up against hard times.

4. We don’t see things as they are – we see things as we are.  A previous post discusses our lack of objectivity due to every day bias because our perceptual filters create a lens of interpretive bias through which we see our individual reality.  Because the lens of the masses is a kaleidoscope, objectivity demands that we look at a prism of perspectives – not just our monochromatic reality.

5. Emotional contagion is real! When we are happy to see others they become  happy to see us – the same goes for greeting people with a flat affect and more.

6. It is human to lack appreciation for things that are handed to us. Conversely, striving for a prize that is withheld for too long, can suck the joy out of finally receiving it.

7. Much of early adulthood is spent trying to prove something to ourselves, our parents and family. A lack of self-awareness about our motivational drive can land us in a miserable job, loveless marriage and/or serious debt.

8. Avoid people who have acquired worldly success but haven’t gotten over themselves.

9. There’s a precarious balance being humble and becoming a doormat as well as being assertive and coming off as an ass.

10. Validation is magic!  Human potential blooms like petals under the light of acknowledgement and warmth of praise.  To change behaviors – shine a light on what is right.

11. Innate curiosity and a desire to grow often trumps advanced degrees and pedigrees. Both are great, if I can hire only one, give me the former over the latter any day!

12. Success is not for “other” people.  The most famous and together people on the planet have their issues, problems and foibles.  Most of them simply wanted it more, knew the right people and/or had opportune timing.

13. Refuse to think that you are superior or inferior to anyone who knows or has more/less than you – learn from all of them.

This baker’s dozen contains a few things that I “know” from direct experience – could anyone have merely told me? Would hearing the the lessons help if only to raise a warning flag or to validate intuition – or was Marcel Proust right?

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” ~Marcel Proust

• What do you think?
• Did you learn from “wisdom” that was passed down?
• Do you have lessons to share?

Is Your Objectivity Jacked? Everyday bias in bad decisions

If you’re like most people, you like to think of yourself as someone who thinks clearly and objectively.  Me too, until an recent event served as a lightening rod for appreciating our inability to think without bias.

Recently, a former colleague and friend of my husband posted a FaceBook link to a newsletter that caused an uproar in our house. The newsletter cited the 1964 Civil Rights Act as and example of federal government intrusion into restaurants and movie houses – even creating an inability for people to decide who could be their neighbor.

With no doubt in his mind, my husband questioned his friend and was shocked when his colleague replied that he couldn’t see anything wrong with the article.

Here’s where it gets interesting…and creates huge potential for divided camps:

while he saw nothing wrong, I was profoundly upset by it! In 1939 the five-year old girl who would become my mother learned that she not allowed to swim in the community pool. Being told, “No Spics Allowed” haunted her and created devastating ripple effects.  So it makes sense that  I was offended but what I  couldn’t fathom was that my husband’s colleague (the bright, kind, southern Christian man who posted it) reported reading the article three times and couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I shared how my bias caused such a negative reaction to the article but wondered, what’s his story…how can I understand his perspective just as I wish he understood  mine?

Out of respect for me, this lovely man told my husband that he took the offending post down but: I don’t think that’s the answer…nor do I want to debate whether the article or our friend was a victim of bigoted bias or not – let’s simply use this real-life  situation as a springboard for understanding.

The answer is to intercept our brains’ auto-pilot for bias.

Here’s How Objectivity Gets Jacked:

Hi-jacking: (reacting before thinking brain)

The amygdala or unevolved brain processes our perception and feelings as good or bad within milliseconds. This can cause a regrettable knee-jerk response cover in the previous post,  “When Smart People Make JackAss Moves”. During an amygdala hi-jacking the emotions are so strong that our unevolved brain (the amygdala) takes over before the evolved executive brain (the prefrontal cortex) can process the information to regulate our response.

Example: My initial reaction to reading the offending post was shock and anger.  I don’t think that I could have maintained a poker-face had we been face-to-face so the virtual exchange may have spared me from an amygdala hi-jacking and jackass move.

Even if we are able to hit the un-evolved brain “pause” button to allow our executive brain to analyze, our thinking may be jacked a second time!

Low-jacking: (interpretive bias brain)

After the amygdala does the initial good/bad processing,  the executive brain (pre-frontal cortex) uses intelligence, data and previous experiences to assess whether the initial feelings and perception were accurate.  Our executive brain’s thinking can be “low-jacked” (to access by an alternate means) by our sub-conscious tendency to latch-on to information that validates our initial perception and to filter out what doesn’t support it.

Examples:

• good or bad first impressions or prejudices (pre-judging) and how we may be more or less willing to give others a pass
• placebo effect and how we often get what we expect
• how remarkably bright people are unable to see the diverse perspectives of social, political, or religious issues
• how physicians’ training/time limitations add interpretive bias to a patient types and cause mis-diagnoses
• why a juror’s personal experience (aka bias) can impede their ability to impartially judge factual evidence.

The truth of our reality is that we don’t see things as they are – we see things as we are.

Sadly, our knee-jerk reactions and our filtered reasoning means that we access knowledge more selectively than objectively which often results in thinking that is, umm.. jacked.

The important discussion becomes, how does it hurt all of us and what can we do about it?

- When have you been on the receiving end of a jacked idea or decision?

- What can we do to prevent or minimize our the brain low-jackings that create interpretive bias?

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• Gladstone: A Taxonomy of Bias: The Cognitive Miser (lesswrong.com)