“Hell ain’t a bad place to be” – ACDC

No one likes to be a hypocrite. No one wants to be wrong, look stupid or say something obviously contradictory.

But we are often wrong, about lots of things, most of the time. 

Instead of trying to be less wrong, we usually just pretend we are right. I’m pretty good at doing this. It’s easy. And I think most people do it too. You just ignore all the little things you’re wrong about. This is called confirmation bias, a perceptual error that causes us to ignore or undervalue contradictory evidence.

But once in a while, I’ll get a reality check which pops me out of my bubble. Something will happen that forces me to see my own hypocrisy.

• I’ll be complaining to myself about my job as I walk past someone welding steel in 105 degree heat. I wonder, do I want that job instead?
• I complain to a friend that I’m bored and they immediately ask me to help them with an annoying task.
• I spend months making a case for a feature to be built, but when it finally gets approved, I resent the fact that a co-worker gets to work on it instead of me.

It’s painful to hear these little truths. I don’t want to admit how close-minded or petty or self important I’ve been. I’d rather ignore them or make up some other story about what was going on. And usually, that’s what I do. 

But if I can sit with them and digest them a little, new opportunities arise, which weren’t available before. What not to do. Where not to go. What not to say.

Hypocrisy doesn’t show me the truth , but it does shows me untruth, which is still pretty useful, and objectively better than whatever fog shrouded alley I was lost in moments before.

The physical events of my life don’t change either. I don’t instantly get a new job or a promotion or whatever. But I do get to change my desire of things to change.

In this way, we can move forward through life, removing hypocrisy bit by bit.

Originally published on Substack