A healthy relationship with the truth is essential for a happy, successful life.
But this is not a simple thing; the ability to see, acknowledge, and accept what’s true – about ourselves, our circumstances, our relationships; our own strengths and weaknesses, and the challenges we face – is actually much harder than it may seem.
We have all known people in our lives who are smart, self-aware, and curious, but they keep making the same mistakes over and over in one particular area of their lives. You see it, other people see it, but they don’t seem to see it at all.
It’s even more difficult when other people are seeing things that we don’t see – and seeing that we don’t see them.
I remember as a young psychotherapist in my 20s (I’ve been doing this for a very long time!) discovering a new approach or technique that seemed to do wonders. All I could see was the success, and it was exciting.
What I wasn’t seeing was my own confirmation bias, that would minimize where it didn’t work very well, and maximize where it did.
It took some time and experience to see that every approach has its strengths and weaknesses, and every client I work with is unique – what’s helpful with one person may do nothing for another.
And this sort of confirmation bias is something I still have to stay continually vigilant about – because our biases never disappear.
We are made for learning and growth. Our success in life depends, to a significant extent, on increasing our awareness and understanding of the world. Yet we have a tremendous array of biases that color our interpretation of what we perceive, what we experience, and what we think we know.
These biases are not flaws in our system, they exist because they are functional. Like our habits, in most situations, most of the time, these biases work pretty well for us, and the automatic nature of them allows us to live without being continually overwhelmed with bringing consciousness and willpower into every tiny aspect of our lives.
We generally work very hard to confirm our existing beliefs, stories, and biases – because the familiar story that we live within gives us a sense of security and constancy. It’s comforting to feel that what we think we know is true, that what we believe is true, that our sense of the world is true.
…even when it’s not actually true.
So we hold tight to the stories we already believe, and this can blind us to essential information and feedback that we need to make our best decisions.
If our finances are not so good, it’s very common for us to avoid looking at the whole truth squarely. We’ll tend to fudge things in our mind just enough to avoid knowing the full extent of what we’re facing. For example, we’ll tend to take our best month of income and expenses as the norm in our mind, and avoid looking at the true numbers for all those other months.
If our behavior is causing problems in our relationships, we’ll tend to deflect and focus instead on what the other people are doing. It’s much easier for us to see the faults and mistakes of others than it is to see our own.
If our diet and exercise are not healthy, we’ll tend to underestimate how often we eat those double bacon cheeseburgers, while comparing ourselves with people whose diet and exercise are worse than our own. We’ll make a note of the days when we’ve eaten a particularly healthy diet, and gloss over all the many days when we haven’t.
We do this to avoid the anxiety, the regret, and maybe the shame we might feel if we were to look at our situation honestly. Those emotions, particularly shame, are awful, and avoiding them is understandable – but not helpful.
We also do this to avoid confronting just how much we don’t know – because facing the unknown can be a frightening thing.
But in that avoidance, we also deprive ourselves of the ability to solve those problems:
- We need the clear perception of information and feedback in order to adjust our behavior.
- We also need the pain of our negative emotions to fuel our motivation to grow, learn, and change the habits that keep us stuck.
If you spent more than your income and went into debt, it can hurt to feel that, to see how you’re making your future-self suffer and pay for things you’ve already bought and used. But you have to feel it, and see it, so you don’t keep doing it.
If you made an impulsive investment that cost you dearly, you have to feel it and see it, so you don’t lose still more money later.
If you did something that hurt a friend of yours, seeing and knowing what you did may be terribly painful. You may feel guilt and lots of other feelings. But you have to feel it and see it so you don’t continue doing things that hurt others and undermine your relationships.
This can be terribly painful, but it’s how we learn.
We learn much more from our mistakes and failures, because those mistakes and failures show us our blind spots. The key is to be open to learning from them.
And there are always blind spots: knowledge and understanding that we do not yet have… until we do. Then our field of understanding grows, and we can take in more of what had been, until that point in time, hidden from us.
The more we can lean into this dynamic process, the greater will be our potential for learning and success.
Accept that of course we all have blind spots, and it’s often painful when we first see them. Welcome that pain as an ally – it’s there to motivate you to see what you had not seen before, to learn, and to change your behavior.
Approaching our biases and blind spots with that spirit of curiosity and discovery can make the difference between suffering and flourishing. Between failing in the same way over and over… and failing in new ways that expand our knowledge, understanding, and skills.
PS: I’m currently expanding my life coaching practice. Go to my website to sign up for a free 30-minute initial conversation.
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