Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Eric from the one you Feed with
Speaker 1: this week's mini episode. Before we start, I'm going to
Speaker 1: announce one more time that there are just a couple
Speaker 1: of spots left in the one on one coaching work
Speaker 1: that I'm doing. If you're interested, uh, send me an email.
Speaker 1: We're really really working with folks on creating habits which
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of create the quality of our life or
Speaker 1: our destiny. So if you're looking for help to do
Speaker 1: more of the things that are important to you or
Speaker 1: to do less of the things that you think are
Speaker 1: destructive in your life, let me know. Send me an
Speaker 1: email to Eric at one you Feed dot net. On
Speaker 1: this week's many episode when I want to talk about
Speaker 1: our cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are a psychological term for
Speaker 1: ways in which our brain tends to go wrong and
Speaker 1: come to the wrong solution very often. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about three of them today and how they
Speaker 1: really play off of each other. The first one, and
Speaker 1: this is probably my favor cognitive bias, if you can
Speaker 1: have a favorite, one, is called the fundamental attribution error.
Speaker 1: And really what the fundamental attribution error is. It says
Speaker 1: that when we observe the behavior of someone else, we
Speaker 1: attribute what they do to their own internal causes or
Speaker 1: their inherent personality, whereas with ourselves we take a lot
Speaker 1: of the circumstances into considerations. So an example would be,
Speaker 1: if I didn't go to the gym yesterday, I will
Speaker 1: consider all the things that happened. I had a really
Speaker 1: busy day, one of the boys needed picked up from
Speaker 1: school unexpectedly, and so I'll consider all those circumstances. If
Speaker 1: you didn't go to the gym today, I will tend
Speaker 1: to think it's because you're lazy or you're unmotivated. And
Speaker 1: if we think about this, we apply this in our
Speaker 1: life all the time. We are we are very good
Speaker 1: at giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, but not other people. And you can
Speaker 1: see where this gets us into trouble in our relationships
Speaker 1: with other people. The other thing that this can do
Speaker 1: is it can also be a way for us to
Speaker 1: explain away a lot of our behavior. And like most
Speaker 1: things in life, I think probably the real answer is
Speaker 1: somewhere between those two things. There's an internal cause, there's
Speaker 1: internal conditions, and then there's the external conditions, And so
Speaker 1: how do we work with those two things. But if
Speaker 1: we're swinging too far to either side, letting ourselves off
Speaker 1: the hook because of all the circumstances, or blaming others
Speaker 1: because they're just inherently that way it, we can end
Speaker 1: up in a tricky spot. The second part, that second
Speaker 1: cognitive bias. It's not really a cognitive bias, but it's
Speaker 1: a way of thinking about these things. It's called the
Speaker 1: covariant model. And basically what it says is when we're
Speaker 1: looking at people's behavior, there's three things that we're looking
Speaker 1: at to try and try and arrive at what's happening.
Speaker 1: One is those three things are consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency.
Speaker 1: So I'll use an example of Bob is the boss
Speaker 1: and he gets angry and he yells at Sally. So
Speaker 1: one of the things when we're looking at this situation
Speaker 1: from the outside, we're gonna think of about, is well
Speaker 1: does everybody else yell at Sally? I mean, if everybody
Speaker 1: is always angry with Sally, well, then maybe we're gonna
Speaker 1: give Bob a little bit more credit. Also, we're gonna
Speaker 1: think about how does Bob react to people who aren't Sally?
Speaker 1: What how's Bob treat you know, Sue and Jane and Tom,
Speaker 1: and then finally we'll be we'll be looking at the
Speaker 1: consistency for you know, is Bob always kind of yelling
Speaker 1: at everybody? And depending on where those things are, that
Speaker 1: will lean us towards you up, it's a circumstantial thing.
Speaker 1: It's this thing that's outside Bob, or it's fundamental to Bob.
Speaker 1: It's internal, it's who he is. So if he's he
Speaker 1: only loses his temper with Sally once in a while,
Speaker 1: and we all agree Sally can be a pain in
Speaker 1: the ass, then we're gonna tend to think that that's
Speaker 1: an external cause. On the other hand, if he's doing
Speaker 1: it with everybody, we're gonna tend to think it's an
Speaker 1: internal cause. Now, this is all well and good if
Speaker 1: we take the time to get there with this, but
Speaker 1: as we talked about, the fundamental attribution error is going
Speaker 1: to have us tend to immediately assume it's something internal
Speaker 1: to them and let that go. And the other challenges
Speaker 1: is human and there's another cognitive bias that's called automatic believing,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it sounds like. We tend to
Speaker 1: be wired to believe what we hear right away and
Speaker 1: then most of us will then think a little bit more.
Speaker 1: That thinking part comes in on top of it and
Speaker 1: starts to question is that true? Is that not true?
Speaker 1: But in times where we're tired or we're stressed, that
Speaker 1: automatic believing jumps right in and we we we go
Speaker 1: to the first conclusion. We've talked about decision fatigue. It's
Speaker 1: a similar idea. We our brain is trying to minimize
Speaker 1: the amount of energy it spends, and so it will
Speaker 1: go right to that. And so if we're not if
Speaker 1: we're not careful, we make that fundamental attribution error. But
Speaker 1: that the that covariant model, looking at the consensus, the distinctiveness,
Speaker 1: and the consistency gives us a way to judge not
Speaker 1: only our own actions, but those of others and try
Speaker 1: and understand where where's the behavior coming from. This can
Speaker 1: be a great way to deal with people who are
Speaker 1: who are challenging in your life if you can start
Speaker 1: to look through those things and find out what it is,
Speaker 1: because it's very easy to be She's just always pain
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say pain in the ass a bunch
Speaker 1: of this episode. She's always a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1: Or um he's always in a bad mood, and we
Speaker 1: can use the covariant model to go well, is that true?
Speaker 1: Is he in a bad mood around everyone? Are only
Speaker 1: certain people? You know? How? Are are other people in
Speaker 1: a bad mood in the same situation, etcetera, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: those are just a couple of different ways to look
Speaker 1: at how we're viewing the world and begin to question
Speaker 1: some of our automatic thoughts about how we view what
Speaker 1: we do and what others do. So hopefully that is helpful. Again,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in working with me one on one,
Speaker 1: send me an email Eric at one you feed dot net.
Speaker 1: We'll have another episode out Tuesday and talk with you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks Byew