Podcast Transcript | Ep. 63

Uncovering Biases and Overcoming Hypocrisy

Uncovering Biases and Overcoming Hypocrisy | Ep. 63

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek.

[00:00:41] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with another episode of order within.

[00:00:50] today. We're going to be covering the topic of biases and hypocrisy. So we're going to look to [00:01:00] uncover. Our biases and hypocrisy. So we're going to want to understand biases and hypocrisy. We're going to look to identify our personal biases. We're going to look at recognizing hypocrisy in our lives.

[00:01:15] I'm going to talk about overcoming those biases and hypocrisy. And then we're going to wrap the episode. I've been is episode 63. And the concept of order would then is really about creating order within ourselves. In a very chaotic world. We live in a very chaotic world. And how do we navigate that?

[00:01:37] And as I've gotten older and as I've studied other people and successful people and people that are fulfilled. I see and have found how much of an impact. Our mindset is on everything. Our mindset truly is everything. And it's the perspective that we have on the world. The way we view things. Our [00:02:00] minds are extremely powerful.

[00:02:03] So when we there's all this leverage that we have that are creative, logical, emotional intelligence, the intellectual side of what we're doing, our curiosity, our openness. Our desire to grow and get better. Uh, our tenacity. Our fierceness. Our ability to press forward that grit. Those are all positive components of our minds.

[00:02:29] But there's also negative components of our minds. Fear can take us over. We can have biases. We can be hypocritical. We can be. Blind to certain things. We can be judgmental to ourself and others. So there's a lot of things that we have to look out for. And on top of that, the social structures that we live within, the societies that we live within, the social media, the news media.

[00:02:54] The entertainment media. All of these things, video games, porn. [00:03:00] All of this stuff can feed on. Our negative aspects and they can take over our lives if we're not careful. Per I came from that I was addicted to porn depressed. Suicidal. Played tons of video games. I was very unhappy. I'm not saying if you play video games, you're unhappy. It's just, I know that.

[00:03:24] I was very unfulfilled at that point. And that was points in my life. And so much of that was based on the beliefs that I had, the way that I was treating myself. And the way I was engaging with my mind, the way I was using my mind, I was allowing the world to dictate who I was and what I believed in.

[00:03:45] And what mattered to me. And as I began to reclaim myself and uncover a lot of these bias biases, these hypocrisy, these hypocritical components in my life. I increased my self awareness. I [00:04:00] began to observe and ruthlessly look at my mind and my beliefs, regardless of what it showed me. And as painful as it was, and it helped me to begin healing. And that's why this work is so important. And so when I talk about uncovering biases and overcoming hypocrisy,

[00:04:16] It's not to make people feel bad or less than, or lower than because it's not that. It's that we live in a very chaotic and confusing world. And there's a lot of things that can hang us up that can drop us into mental cycles that keep us depressed and in fear and sad and isolated and lonely. And that's why it's so important that we learn to examine. And we find the courage within ourselves.

[00:04:46] To examine our beliefs, to examine our actions, to look at who we are as humans. And to be honest with ourselves about where we are, because the more we deceive ourselves. The more deceitful the world becomes the more [00:05:00] destructive things become. We transform life when we become honest and open with ourselves, that's the way we do it. Without that we are lost.

[00:05:09] So let's get into some of these components of biases and hypocrisy. So I'm going to, I'm going to define a few. Components of biases and talk about how they shape our perceptions and decisions. And then I'm going to get a little more granular with some specific types of biases as well. But one of the bigger ones is cognitive dissonance theory.

[00:05:31] The theory proposed by Leon Festinger posits that people experienced discomfort when they hold two or more con contradictory beliefs or when their behaviors contradict their beliefs. To relieve this discomfort. People will often deny or minimize one of the contradictory beliefs or behaviors, even when it represents a difficult truth.

[00:05:51] We have competing ideas in our head effectively. And so let's say. Someone tells us, let's say what we are pro a [00:06:00] vaccine person, and we believe in vaccines, but then we find out that. There is dangers with specific vaccines or there's information that were not being shared about vaccines. We have a difficult choice to make in that moment. Do we continue to.

[00:06:17] Have a full pro stance or do we look into the information and dive into it deeper and get educated? And then. Discern, whether we are now full supporting or we're at least somewhat hesitant. And that's the. That's the component that is difficult about this is so much, we have to make decisions like this based on the information that's presented to us.

[00:06:43] Often, because we're trying to keep ourselves psychologically safe and feel good about the world. So most of this, almost all of this is driven. Not because people are bad people. Not because people are trying to do the wrong thing. But they're trying to protect [00:07:00] themselves. And so they do that. We do that.

[00:07:03] By dismissing information or denying certain aspects of information that we've uncovered that contradict what we believe, because those contradictions challenge, the way we view the world and create a psychological danger for us, at least a perceived danger, because it does hurt. This is emotionally painful.

[00:07:21] So understanding that's an underlying component of this as cognitive dissonance theory is something that we all have to manage and be up against and be mindful of because it affects all of us. No one is safe from. From this. The next big one is confirmation bias. This is the tendency to search for interpret favor and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypothesis while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. This is.

[00:07:50] Starkly shown. In the political media. Yeah, very left-leaning media companies and you have [00:08:00] some right leaning media companies. And depending on where, what your beliefs are. You may only get information. From stuff on the left or stuff on the right. And then you dismiss everything that comes out from the other side. That's dangerous because there could be valid information in there. This is why this sermon is so important. This is why using our own minds is so important because we have to realize that.

[00:08:24] People knowingly or unknowingly may be telling us things that are not correct. I don't think everyone's out there. Misleading people on purpose. I definitely think there are absolutely people misleading us though, for sure. But I do think that some people get caught up in that and they end up sharing information that may not be correct, but that's because of those biases, we can get stuck in confirmation bias, refusing to look at other alternative information and that keeps us in an echo chamber.

[00:08:54] So that's another big one that we have to be mindful of because it happens again all the time. And then the [00:09:00] last one here that I want to talk about, I'm going to get a little deeper into some of these other side of these things and talk about some hypocrisy. But self-serving bias is another psychological component.

[00:09:08] People have a propensity to attribute positive outcomes to their own inherent characteristics, like intelligence or hard work. And negative outcomes to external. Circumstances, this often leads to denial or avoidance of hard truths that might reveal unflattering aspects of one's personality or actions. Now.

[00:09:27] That's hard because. When dealing with hard components, specifically the negative things. We always attribute to them as external. Now the interesting thing is though there's some components of positive psychology, where we look at negative aspects as temporarily temporary or external. And that's a good thing.

[00:09:47] But when there are repetitive things, common things that continuously show up that negatively impact our lives. And we refuse to look at them and our responsibility in them. We become. In [00:10:00] denial, we become in a state of denial. And that's the thing that we have to be mindful of. One of the things that I love about Nathaniel Brandon's.

[00:10:07] Six pillars of self-esteem is that one of those core pillars is responsibility. That means we're going to take responsibility for ourselves, our thoughts, our minds, our emotions, our actions, and our lives. That means the good and the bad. So we have to be able to be honest with ourselves, the challenge is.

[00:10:24] As many of us have fixed mindsets. And we assume that challenges. Mistakes failures, our representation of our character, of who we are because of the beliefs that we've been told. The reality is that those are just components of growth. Failure mistakes. That's inevitable when we're doing anything. When we're learning, when we're living, those are good things. They should be celebrated. It's not a reflection of our inabilities or our lack.

[00:10:51] It's simply the sign or flags to where we are in our progress. So we should celebrate these things. It's not something to hide from.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Now thinking about hypocrisy and how this manifests in our thoughts, behaviors, and interactions. Hypocrisy is a behavior in which individuals contradict their stated beliefs or feelings. This might involve, for example, a person who strongly advocates for environmental. Conservation, but frequently flies on private jets.

[00:11:20] Talking to you, bill gates. Contributing significantly to Carmen admissions. So it's the double standards. Hypocrisy is effectively setting a double standard. It says I'm going to hold you to a standard, but I'm not going to hold myself to it. I'm going to say something, I'm going to say, this is what I believe, but my actions are going to show you differently. I'm going to say that I actually care about you, but I'm beating you right now. Or I'm dismissing everything that you care about. And I'm just going to disregard you as a human.

[00:11:46] Matching our words with our actions is critical. If we're not that's the HIPAA hypocritical component and there are a large. Elements of hypocrisy in our society. As an American. [00:12:00] The hypocritical nature of our government is deeply concerning. Because we take this position that we're the world's police, but yet we do all these terrible things to countries all around the world in the name of progress.

[00:12:15] And what's good. But it's we do terrible things. And we justify terrible things. So hypocrisy is a rot on humanity that we must uncover and be mindful of. And overcome these things, and this is where they play together. And another way to look at the relationship between bias and hypocrisy is through moral licensing. So this is an interesting concept. It's a psychological phenomenon where people after doing something good, feel licensed to act in a way.

[00:12:44] That might be considered a moral or bad. It's a form of self justification and it often reveals itself and hypocritical behaviors. So for instance, someone might feel justified in making racially insensitive remarks because they volunteered at a multicultural [00:13:00] event or politicians who are working so hard for the people and their.

[00:13:06] Doing, they're doing these meetings and they're setting laws and they're working hard and I'm representing you. And I'm trying to make your life better as a politician. Look at me, I'm doing right. I'm helping my community, but in the private they do terrible things. They're dishonest. They're participating in

[00:13:25] In. Illegal activities, drugs, sexual activities, whatever it is, it may just be very hedonistic things. But propo presenting yourself as a moral character because you're serving your community, does not justify your right to go out and do terrible things. This happens a lot. So that's called moral licensing.

[00:13:43] It's very. Very common right now in our world. There's a lot of people that believe they're on the right side of history, therefore that enables them to do terrible things. This is the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany. There was this whole moral licensing component. Oh, we're [00:14:00] saving things. We're cleaning the world. We're protecting the world from the bad people.

[00:14:05] Which in this instance, Was the Jewish people, which was obviously a lie. And that was a fallacy. But they use that validation as a moral high ground. We're experiencing that same thing right now in this country. There are lots of people in this country that believe they have the moral high ground and therefore can justify whatever behaviors they want because they have the moral high ground.

[00:14:31] I can promise you the moral high ground is a slippery slope. And it's very subjective. Particularly when you're claiming it to the world. So we gotta be mindful of that.

[00:14:43] The way, these things negatively impact. Our society. And relationships is pretty clear though. Political polarization is one biases contribute to political polarization when people only seek out or believe information that supports [00:15:00] their existing views, confirmation bias, just like I was talking about.

[00:15:03] This leads to a more divided society where shared understanding and compromise become challenging. Hello, live on earth in 2023. Distrust and means communication. Hypocrisy can erode trust in social professional and personal relationships. When someone's actions do not align with their words, it leads to distrust and can harm their reputation. This is true in parenting and friendships.

[00:15:27] And everything. So when our words don't match our actions, it does breed distrust, and it can, it erodes a way. At that trust and it also creates an incredible amount of resentment.

[00:15:38] We have impaired decision-making. Biases can lead to poor decision-making because they skew our perception of reality. This applies to personal decisions about health, finance, and relationships, as well as societal decisions about policy and governance. For example, the sunk cost fallacy might lead someone to hold onto a bad investment or stay in an unfulfilling [00:16:00] relationship because they're overly focused on the resources they've already invested. So we stay in a bad situation because we've already put so much time into it.

[00:16:08] That keeps us in it, as opposed to realizing that this is bad, it's not getting any better. And I need to cut my losses and move on. That's hard for us to do. It impairs our ability to resolve conflict. And personal relationships biases can fuel conflict and make them more difficult to resolve.

[00:16:30] For example, the self-serving bias can lead people to blame others for problems while absolving themselves of responsibility, escalating conflicts and hindering resolution. We see this all the time. Being unable to take responsibility for our own actions and the impact that it has on others in our communities creates terrible resentment.

[00:16:49] And all this stuff just festers over time. The greatest way to heal is to be honest and open and transparent and accept what is the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. [00:17:00] You can't. You can't repair conflict. You can't resolve conflict without recognizing the sins of both parties. That's just a reality. That's honestly why I don't believe like Ukraine, Russia. That's happening right now.

[00:17:15] I don't see how that's going to be concluded. Both parties are dug in. It's just when that's happening. We can't. Connect and heal. We have to recognize our own shortcomings. And when people refuse to do that, it makes it impossible to resolve conflicts. And then finally the impacts on mental health, both biases and hypocrisy can affect an individual's mental health.

[00:17:40] By CS is unrealistic optimism. Optimism can lead to disappointment and psychological distress hypocrisy, especially when recognized can lead to feelings of guilt, shame. And self-doubt. So the. Unrealistic optimism is I've did an episode on that toxic positivity. It's denying reality. [00:18:00] Reality has negative components to it. There are negative consequences, too many things. We have to be honest about that. That's okay.

[00:18:07] That's why it's like when you just need to be able to be honest about these things in our society. We need to be able to have honors conversations. About the way our governments run. We need to be able to have honors conversations about how corporate America is influencing the political structure of our governments and all these policies that are getting shoved down our throats. We need to be able to have honest conversations about pharmaceutical companies and the impacts that it's having on our lives as humans.

[00:18:32] And all the stuff that happened with the pandemic, we need to be able to have honest conversations about this. We need to be able to have honest conversations, what we're seeing in the political landscape. The corruption that is everywhere. We can't selectively choose candidates because we don't like them. That's dishonest.

[00:18:50] Corruption is bad in all forms. It needs to be rooted out regardless of what party it's in. This is why I'm politically homeless. [00:19:00] Because there's so much bias in hypocrisy and the entire political landscape. We have to be honest with ourselves. If we're going to move forward.

[00:19:09] And that's why. Reflecting. And examining our own prejudice and limiting beliefs are critical. This is how we identify our own personal biases. And so we're going to talk about a few more bias types that impact us personally now, because we're looking at the large-scale stuff initially. Now we're looking at us personally.

[00:19:29] One of those is implicit bias. Also known as unconscious bias. So this is attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding actions. And decisions in an unconscious way. They can be favorable or unfavorable. But this is why.

[00:19:50] We must reflect. And journal and meditate and be introspective.

[00:19:58] Because without [00:20:00] that, without our understanding of implicit bias. Usually it's talked about race. But it can be, it can in fact impact many different things in our lives. And the way we uncover this though, is we learn about ourselves. We know who we are. We know we, we think about things.

[00:20:17] We think about our relationship with others. We think about our relationship to race. We think about our relationship. To gender, all of those things. We make them conscious. In ourselves.

[00:20:30] Because without consciousness, we just go on behaving in ways that aren't our own. It's programmed in a way.

[00:20:38] And so that unconscious. Component of ourselves is critical. So we have to get in and uncover that stuff. So those are things that we have to be mindful of, but you only get to that. When we start doing the work of reflecting on who we are and the way we think about things and how do we view the very.

[00:20:57] Critical components of society. How do we view these [00:21:00] hot topic things? And I'm not talking about the views of others. I'm talking about. What do we actually think about it? When we sit down? Spend time with ourselves and think through it. What do we really think about those things? That's the hard work.

[00:21:13] That's the. That's how you uncover. The quote, unquote, implicit bias. It's that term's a little frustrating for me. Because people like to call it out. And others. But I think that's unfair and we have, it's something that we have to do in ourselves. It's the work that we have to do in ourselves, because it's also can be as a very deceptive way of just saying things about other people without actually having any kind of validation for it. So it's important to know that we do this introspectively so we can become more connected to who we are and understand our own minds.

[00:21:48] Another aspect. Of what we're looking at is anchoring bias. This occurs when people rely too heavily on the first piece of information they encountered. That's the [00:22:00] anchor when making decisions.

[00:22:03] For instance, if you're negotiating a salary and the employer makes the first offer that number often serves as the anchor that influences the rest of the negotiation. So this anchoring biases is something that's real that we have to be mindful of. And that starting point can make a big difference.

[00:22:19] Another one is availability. Heuristic. This is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. It operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important or at least more important than alternative solutions, which are not as readily recalled. So again,

[00:22:43] This is.

[00:22:45] Taking our consciousness to a deeper level. It's not just the thing. That's on the surface. The surface level thing is probably, maybe not the answer we got to dig a little deeper, but that availability heuristic can cause us to favor the things that are readily available [00:23:00] first. Which can bias us in a way.

[00:23:04] Another thing is hindsight bias. Sometimes called the, I knew it all along effect. This is the tendency to believe after an outcome is already known that we would have predicted or expected it. But that's once it happens. It's easier to say. Well, yeah, so that's the hindsight bias, right? The hindsight is 2020. That's what that saying comes from.

[00:23:27] But we have to be mindful of that as well. Because we don't know what's going to happen. It's easy to say that once an outcome is already known, but when the outcome is unknown, We often have a very difficult time predicting what will happen. Predicting the future is really hard. Y'all. It's really hard.

[00:23:44] An interesting one too, is the fundamental attribution error. This is the tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors when judging others behaviors. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, your immediate [00:24:00] reaction might be. That the person is a jerk or a bad driver, rather than considering.

[00:24:05] Potential situational factors. They're rushing to the hospital. They didn't see you et cetera. Now this is something that I'm trying to do a lot. Especially when I'm driving. If someone cuts me off, I'm trying to consider that maybe they have something going on. What's going on in their world. It's hard. I had an incident where I got cut up the other day with my daughter in the car and it really aggravated me. I was mad about it.

[00:24:29] Because I could tell the guy was super angry about the stoplight and he just jerked over. Cause he needed to go. But I have no clue about that. Guy's day. I have no, no clue what he's going through. He could be having a terrible day. He could be rushing, who knows? It's you just never know what could be happening. So it's important that we realize those things and understand that.

[00:24:49] Bye attribute ING error to somebody being bad or mean, or jerk. That can cause us to overlook the actual cause of what's happening.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] The last one. Then I want to talk about is the Dunning Kruger effect. This is a well-known big one. Well, I guess a war more well-known one. Is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability at tasks overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusionary. Superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. So this often happens when someone starts something.

[00:25:26] It's like the beginner's luck. Usually they overestimate their ability to do something because they've got a quick win. But to really master something in, to go deep into something, it requires a lot of mistakes. A lot of learning, a lot of understanding, a lot of doing. And the Dunning Kruger effect.

[00:25:45] Overestimates our ability to be good at something just because we've captured. Uh, task in the short term. Instead of looking at the long arc. Of mastery that typically things take to do so we, we can [00:26:00] overestimate our abilities. To feel superior. Which is often masking our own internal inferiority. Those are things that we have to be mindful of.

[00:26:10] I have. Something I have to be mindful of is my arrogance, because sometimes I can be arrogant about things trying to overcompensate, where I may feel insecure. That's something that I've got to look out for. That's something that I'm mindful of. Because of this. Because I know that it can trap me up.

[00:26:29] And so the.

[00:26:31] The comp the piece that's important here. So those are a few types of personal biases that we have to be mindful of for ourselves. But then looking at how do we overcome those personal biases? And that's just what I was talking about earlier. I'm going to talk about this later, but I talk about this all the time on the show, guys. It's not BS.

[00:26:49] Reflection. Self-reflection and journaling and meditating and thinking, observing our mind, looking at our beliefs, our values. Mapping them out, [00:27:00] writing them out, talking through it, writing through those things. Thinking through those things. What matters to you? What do you think about those things?

[00:27:07] Take the time to consider these things for yourself, not what someone else has told you, not what your favorite influencer says, not what the media says. What do you think.

[00:27:17] Learn to love and trust your own mind. Trust yourself. I seek diverse perspectives. Don't fear. Diverse perspectives.

[00:27:28] Welcome them. Let Lim expand your view of the world. If you come to know things that disrupts or changes what you knew in the past, celebrate it. You're growing, you're evolving. That's a wonderful thing. So lean into that. Lean into self reflection, lean into diverse perspectives and engage in that critical digging. This is how we engage in these things. We are open to it. We are, we listen, we lean in.

[00:27:55] Because if we don't, we turn things get [00:28:00] very ugly and that's what we're experiencing right now. And this is why. Becoming aware of our double standards in our inconsistencies, in our thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs is how we recognize hypocrisy in our lives.

[00:28:12] And so now I want to talk a little bit about the common areas with which hypocrisy can arise in our lives. The first one is going to be focused on moral judgments. So related to moral judgements, environmental ethics, someone may vocally advocate for the importance of environmental conservative conservation. Just like I said,

[00:28:31] But they may personally engage. And. Things that damage the environment like Excessive use of plastic products or whatever it is, there's a lot of things that you can do to help the environment you can be mindful of your usage. You can minimize your waste. You can be mindful of how much water you're using. You can use recyclables, you can do all these things,

[00:28:52] but if you're not doing those things, but you're out there advocating and screaming in people's faces about the environment. That makes you a hypocrite and [00:29:00] hypocrites. For people, it's hard to take them seriously because you're already violating your own standards. And if we're violating our own standards, then how can we expect anyone else to do those things? That's why the moral judgments.

[00:29:15] Like environmental ethics, the personal values. A person may condemn others for lying or dishonesty yet they may not hesitate to lie when it benefits them or makes their life easier. These are components where moral judgments lay into our lives that undermine our credibility and weaken our positions and weaken us as humans because.

[00:29:37] Hypocrisy Hertz, our souls, man, we are honest, moral beings were made to be that way. We have a conscience. That's the whole concept of it is a conscience. So when we undermine our own selves, we undermine our conscious. And that hurts us. That creates sadness pain. This isolation in our own being, because we're isolating [00:30:00] ourselves to our own behaviors.

[00:30:03] It's critical that we look to, where are our words are not aligned with our actions. And the moral judgements are a big way to do that. Environmental ethics, personal values. There's just the way you handle your life. The things that you believe in your personal lives. There's. There's a variety of components within the moral judgment side that we have to be mindful of.

[00:30:24] When we're observing ourselves and ensuring that our actions align with our words.

[00:30:29] The next side is political beliefs. Legislation and personal behavior, a politician might vote for a legislation that penalizes certain behaviors like drug use or tax evasion, but then engage in those behaviors privately. Dude that is happening all the time now. It's something that's destroying our society. Again, it's a dishonest way of living hypocrisy, undermines and uproots, any kind of integrity in our society. And if we don't have an integrity driven society, we don't [00:31:00] have.

[00:31:01] A civilized society.

[00:31:04] A civilized society depends on honesty, integrity, and authenticity. And if it's not happening in the political sphere, which sets the tone and the laws of our nations, it's not going to happen on the day to day.

[00:31:17] There's also the component of public versus private positions. Uh, politician or political activists might hold private views that are different from their public stance due to the need to appeal to their base or due to the pressure of political correctness. That is hypocrisy. That is a falsehood that is living a lie.

[00:31:35] This can also extend to supporting policies publicly that they don't apply in their personal life. So that could be advocating for public school systems. And all of that, but you put your kids in private school. It's, these are the hypocritical components that we must uncover. Politics is bad with that, but without it.

[00:31:56] Without the honesty and integrity we undermine and erode our [00:32:00] society. That's why we're struggling so much. That's why there's so much division and pain in our world.

[00:32:05] Societal. So we're looking now at social interaction. So social norms. Individuals may outwardly conform to social norms and expectations while secretly behaving differently. So a person might condemn certain behaviors in public to fit in or be accepted, but engage in those same behaviors privately.

[00:32:24] Honestly, one of those things that's. Happened a lot. It's less now. But. People that were shaming, gay people. Many times men who would shame other men publicly for being gay, they're privately gay. They have, they're hiding their own sexuality. So that's an example too, of how we can. Perform basically for social norms, but privately, we feel those things or believe those things or don't.

[00:32:54] Aligning our social self with our private self is critical. There is no distinction. [00:33:00] The problem is now as we all wear masks and we have to, in some ways, But the less, we need to wear masks, the more authentic and honest our society will become. The professional environment is another example of this.

[00:33:14] A manager might insist on the importance of work-life balance, but then overwork themselves or expect their team to be constantly available and working long hours. Again. Lip service. What you say and your actions matter. It's not just the words. How we validate who we are and live true to who we are, is what we say. And then what we do.

[00:33:34] Our words and actions must align. If not, we are lying to ourselves and others and we are living a dishonest life. That's why we have this hip-hop hypocrite. Hypocritical driven world. And that's why there's so much psychological pain. And so many of us. Because it's dishonest and we know it.

[00:33:56] And then finally we're friendship and relationships. [00:34:00] Someone may criticize a friend for not spending enough time with them yet they themselves may not put in the effort or time in the friendship. I know that many of you have had interactions with you with others like that. It could be people in your family.

[00:34:13] Who talk about how bad of a kid or son or daughter or whatever friend you may be, but they themselves do nothing. To encourage connection, to put an effort. Again, that's hypocritical behavior. Understanding that. When we. Recognize and confront hypocrisy. The way to go about doing it is by practicing empathy, embracing humility, and recognizing that all of us make mistakes. All of us are trying, all of us are growing. All of us are learning.

[00:34:45] No one is perfect. No one is.

[00:34:49] And so when we can be humble about that and realize that nobody's perfect, all of us are flawed. All of us are learning. No one has all the answers. It just takes the pressure off of all of it. [00:35:00] Even the experts, quote unquote, they don't know everything, man. We need to learn to realize that questioning and Downing things is healthy.

[00:35:07] We should be healthy skeptics. That's important. Blind trust to anything is dangerous. That's how tyranny happens. That's how tyranny has happened all throughout history.

[00:35:17] That's why self assessment, honest self-assessment is critical to this being honest with ourselves about who we are and how we're engaging with the world. We don't do that. This is the world that we ended up creating.

[00:35:32] So in order to overcome biases and hypocrisy in our lives. We need to. Do some of the things that I've already talked about, a lot of the things that I've talked about on this show over the mini episodes that I've done. But it's so important to be open-minded. And realize that we're learning. I encourage you to learn about the growth mindset to take on the growth mindset, to realize that everything is learning. There are no mistakes. It's only growth. It's only learning.

[00:35:58] By having active listening [00:36:00] skills by genuinely listening and trying to understand another's perspective by having empathy and humility, we can bridge that gap. And ongoing self-reflection and challenging. And reshaping, our biases is critical. That never stops. We never stop reflecting on ourselves. This work is never done.

[00:36:18] It's the way we uncover these things and we move forward as a species.

[00:36:25] Personal growth and a commitment to can continual learning. Our pathways to overcoming biases and hypocrisy. This is how we heal our country, our world, all this divide. It starts with us. It starts with each of us. And that's the beautiful thing about it is all of us have this power to heal, to transform, to change and to move through the world and meaningful and loving ways. It starts with matching our words with our actions. And if we're not doing that, recognizing it first and exploring why that's happening, uncovering these [00:37:00] biases and hypocrisy.

[00:37:01] And ourselves is where it begins. And we can begin to live true to who we are as we do the work ourselves. This is how we trained the world. Y'all. This is it. It's critical. There's no more important work in this. I promise you that. This is how we would transform the world. If we would all lean into this work and do it.

[00:37:20] So I encourage you all to examine yourselves, embrace humility, and commit to the ongoing process of overcoming biases and reducing hypocrisy in our lives. It will transform the world that we live within.

[00:37:31] Small changes in our attitudes and behaviors each day contribute to large positive shifts in society. If each of us did this, the world would transform. Just know that y'all literally, if each of us did this one by one, the world would transform. That's how it will change. That's how it will happen.

[00:37:48] And we can't do this. We're doing it is happening whether we want it or not is happening. It's just whether you're going to jump on board or not. That's really the question. Are you want to participate or not?

[00:37:58] All right, [00:38:00] Joel, that's all I got for today's show. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you're enjoying the show in general. Got a whole lot of things going on. I'm excited to share with you all as the updates come through, but I got some new things and I'm working on, I got another show that I'm working on with a buddy of mine, which I'm very excited about.

[00:38:16] There's a lot of things that we've got going on. And so hopefully you all are doing well. Your role and you're growing, you're challenging yourself, challenging others, and you're living true to who you are. But with that being said, y'all wait. You can catch me on Brandon Lee ward at Twitter, Brandon L. Warren on LinkedIn. And my website is Brandon Lee, ward.com. Forgot to do that.

[00:38:35] But that being said y'all until next time.

[00:38:40] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.[00:39:00]