I'll believe it when I see it! A lesson in confirmation bias.

Posted on September 18, 2012 by John Kenworthy, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

I’ll believe it when I see it!

In almost every training session we run, someone will raise their requirement for empirical evidence or “solid proof” before they will commit to applying the tools and techniques that will bring them benefit.

Beliefs are similar to values in that they are part of our personal guidance system. Beliefs often inform values, and values in turn re-inforce our standing in regard to our beliefs.

Beliefs are a critical part of what makes us who we are, but there is a distinction that I find helpful. A belief is something that we have no tangible, undeniable evidence to support. It is impossible to measure beliefs. We simply believe this to be so. Values, on the other hand, are measurable and quantifiable in some form – this does not make them all tangible, but the very fact that we place the word ‘value’ on something means that we can measure it in relation to other values. It is true that you can value your beliefs, and you can believe in your values (if you didn’t you wouldn’t hold them!)

I don’t want to lose anyone here, so bear with me as we delve briefly into the world of quantum physics. Have you ever heard someone, perhaps yourself, say ,”I’ll believe it when I see it ”. Whatever this is about, from the belief in God to the belief that someone will do as they have said they will do, matters not. According to quantum physics, we have to believe it before we see it. (In fact, according to the Bible, we have to believe first, then we will see!
Let me take a short detour here.

* You believe that you exist right?
* You believe that what you see in front of you right now exists, right?
* Can you prove it?
* I hear of chorus of “of course I can!”, go on then, prove it!

You see, I can prove that you are in fact made up of more space than of matter (or rather there are many very clever scientific people who can prove it), so do ‘you’ exist, or are you merely a collection of atoms that appear to have a tangible presence. So when you ‘miss’ the ball on a swing, you can rightfully state that you chose to move a few lighter atoms but you have in fact struck the air above the ball with great accuracy and that air is now exactly where you wanted it.

Now, you dream, right? You’ve had dreams that are very real to you. How do you know that they were the dreams and this is reality? You believe it! If you have see the movie “Inception” you know that this can be a troublesome question.

Why am I saying this? Because you cannot see something that you don’t believe in!

You cannot prove something if you don’t believe first! I am constantly asked for ‘proof’ that this or that works, that this is THE way to improve your golf, or that this is THE right way to develop your leadership. The problem is that, until you believe it works, you won’t see that it does work.
Those in the know about this already know that we work from victory not for victory.

Let’s take another small example:

You watch television I assume, and you’ve grown up knowing that television works – that radio waves containing a signal are transmitted from a TV station, are picked up by your television through the air, or through cables. Have you ever actually seen a radio wave? No? You believe they exist though.

‘Yes, but the evidence is seen on the TV’.

OK, little voice of disbelief, turn the TV off. Do radio waves still exist?
It’s a little like the question ‘If a tree falls down in the woods and nobody is there to see it, does it make a noise?’. When you were a child, you climbed into the fridge to see if the light stayed on when the door was shut? No, that’s just me, you are wiser than I – by the way, it goes off!

Why is this important?

Well, your belief in yourself and using these tools and techniques is critical to their success. Your belief informs your unconscious mind about any particular shot in golf – and this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. your belief in your strategy, the alignment of the resources (people, tools, money) and that the market will respond in a particular way… It is a belief. The evidence comes AFTER the fact… never before!

You step up to the tee on your least favourite hole on the course. You prepare for the shot, you utter to yourself “I will make this drive, this time it will be different, this time, I will strike the ball square on, the ball will soar through the air, and following a graceful arc it will land right smack in the middle of the fairway exactly where I’m aligned”. Your unconscious mind is informed by this belief and promptly provides you with a swing that will support your belief.

How do you train yourself to do this? You spend several practice sessions building a new belief about your ‘nemesis’ hole (any hole for that matter). You visualise making the stroke, sending the ball to exactly where you want it. You do this in your mind’s eye, calmly, cool-ly. Not only have you seen what you will see with your own eyes, you’ve heard what you will hear with your own ears, you’ve felt how you will feel having made the shot, you’ll taste victory and smell success, exactly as if you had achieved it. I’ll repeat that, exactly as if you had achieved it. Let this be true, and it will be so.

By doing this, you are stepping into the future and acting as if you had conquered the hole and provided your unconscious with new images and new neural pathways to access now and in the future.
This is altering your belief. With practice, you will indeed step up to that tee and your unconscious self belief is of someone who has conquered that hole and will do so now.

In order for us to improve ourselves, in any field of life, we must reach beyond our senses – those of our conscious mind – to what we can be and do with the vast, often untapped, capabilities of our mind. I’m sure that you have seen or read the metaphor of the mind being like an iceberg. What we see above the surface, the readily experienced part of our mind is a tiny fraction of what lies beneath normal awareness. If you consider that our conscious mind makes up only about 5% of our total awareness, we all give a disproportionate power over our lives to our conscious mind – and it is our conscious mind that prevents us from reaching our full potential.

This is why, in visualization, we go beyond simply ’seeing’ a picture of our success to the full range of senses – building a rich, realistic, high fidelity experience as if it were real. This is stepping into the future. And you all know that it is much easier to look back into the past and see what happened to get here than it is to see the future. Hindsight is 20/20 – and stepping into the future provides you with just that. Now that you believe in the tangible, real, success of winning that competition, striking that perfect drive, chipping that perfect lie onto the green and sinking that 50ft put – you can look back and see how you got there – that’s your training plan!
How does this apply to my leadership?

Excellent question. Not convinced by the golfing metaphors huh?
You step on to the stage to give your “Organizational Restructuring” presentation to a hostile group of employees. You have prepared, practiced and given this same presentation to the board, your senior management team and even your dog. As you approach the centre of the stage, the murmuring in the audience deafens you with its silence. You take a moment to scan the audience… you have a choice:

1. Believe that the audience will pelt you with rotten fruit and vegetables, screeching for your resignation, threatening strike action, or
2. Believe that you are prepared, the arguments are solid, the data supports, the proposal fair and just and that the audience will accept this because you are persuasive.

What happens if you choose to believe the first?

* Guaranteed failure of leadership.

What happens if you choose to believe the second scenario?

* Success as a leader.

Why is this important?

Our body, the muscles that control movement, everything we do take their cue from our unconscious perception. And please do remember here that your so-called ‘body language’ is altered by muscular contractions and extensions.

Remember that vivid dream? If it was frightening, I know that your heart raced, the adrenaline in your system flowed, if it was erotic, you were turned on (hey we’re all adults here right?) Our physiology is the result of our internal state, which is the result of how our mind has changed the external events through our own filters, taken a quick trip through our experiences, wracked our knowledge store, applied our values and belief sets, popped down for further filtration, deletion, distortion and generalisation – caused a personal internal state and triggered a physiological response. Oh, and this happens in a micro- seconds.

The more positive self-images you build through repetition, the more intensely allow yourself to experience them, the more powerful is this self-image, the more potent its affect and the greater the impact on your performance. As a leader, is part of your job to lift or enhance or at least maintain levels of performance in your team? So if you continually remind team members of their positive self-image this will help them do so for themselves?

“That may be true John, but all this positive psychology, self-esteem building, edifying communication and behaviour is just so much new-age clap-trap. Didn’t you say that the focus on only ‘strengths-based development’ was detrimental in the end?”

Regarding the focus on ‘strengths-based development’ – the problem is when you ignore weaknesses and values in the process. New age? Like all the good parts of so called ‘new age’ thinking, it’s stolen from ‘old-age’ thinking and repackaged so you actually believe that you are in control of everything. Clap-trap? OK, here’s a little check for you, which of the following responses from your own father would you prefer and which would you think would be the most beneficial for you, your performance, your well-being:

1. Well-done kiddo, you did really well there. You can make this happen next time when you practice…
2. You never tried hard enough you lazy so and so, you’ll never make this happen however much you practice…

If you respond 2. you are lying. It may be that this is what you actually heard and you think it helped you (because you are driven by the desire to one day please your father…) Imagine how much more you would have achieved now if it were the first… No, please don’t go blame your father for all that ails you. Choose to be different. Choose to make a positive difference.

Remember, it is positive with guidance!

Still having doubts about this?

Should you, by now, still be that voice of unbelief. If you are still of the school of thought that “I’ll believe it when I see it” – I have a couple of questions for you…

Did you ever believe in ‘Santa Claus’? When you were young it is possible that you did, and, as a result of this belief, you saw manifest evidence that the belief was true: the mince pies, carrot and schooner of sherry were consumed and stockings filled with goodies. When you stopped believing… the manifestations stopped! It’s no use telling me now that you stopped believing because it wasn’t true and it was in fact your parents… sorry if I’m destroying anyone’s belief here. You believed it then… and then, it was true.
This is a conversation I had recently with someone who was struggling with this concept:

* So if I believe something, it will come to pass?
* It is more likely that you will do whatever you need to do to make it happen, yes.
* And if it doesn’t happen?
* It was either not possible for you, or you didn’t do everything you needed to do to make it happen. That is, you did not value the achievement sufficiently.
* Surely though, our beliefs alter according to our experience?
* Yes. Our beliefs are informed by our experience and the experience of others who influence us. How we alter our beliefs to fit with our perception of our experience is our choice. What we will not do is believe something that has no value to us.

Leadershift!
Believe it first!

1. Choose something at work that, as a leader, is not your greatest strength.
* Making a presentation perhaps, or
* Giving your boss negative feedback, or
* Closing that sale

2. Choose to believe that you are successful in this area.
* Prepare and practice before doing the live thing

3. Do it!