Unconscious competence

Day 50 since diagnosis. This is hard. Obviously more for Liz than for me.

I'm a guy: I just want to fix it.

I missed a couple of MBA classes a few weeks ago, including the first negotiations class. Got caught up, but finally read the notes last night that a thoughtful classmate sent me. I haven't stopped thinking about one concept since: Fundamental Attribution Error.

Yeah, I know, snooze alert. That last paragraph almost put me to sleep. So forget the phrase.

But it's an important concept: we tend to view how we behave in a more positive light than we view others' behavior. We over-emphasize personal characteristics to explain what someone else does. So we blame the person, rather than external factors, when something doesn’t go right.

Be brutally honest with yourself for a moment. When’s the last time you thought “JERK!” when someone said the wrong thing (they should have known), bumped into you (they weren’t looking), cut you off (inconsiderate idiot), ate a gigantic hamburger and remained super skinny... okay, I can't get past that last one yet.

We tell our friends about someone who is stupid, mean, inconsiderate, unfair, unethical, oblivious, cocky, or out of control. We laugh when the mighty fall off their pedestals. We lob criticisms over the social media wall, caring more about scoring humor points than caring about how they can hurt. We craft simple narratives that help us distance ourselves from real people who commit crimes and horrific acts: they are evil, they are crazy, they are greedy.

The Fundamental Attribution Error describes a natural weakness in us all. It helps us cope with failure and can motivate us to seek success. Chances are that we blame someone or something else when we have negative experiences. We also tend to claim personal success when things go well. Why? To help us feel better about ourselves.

If we choose to blame, we won’t learn from the experience. We can learn to recognize internal factors that influence our behavior. The better we get, the more empathy and patience we have for others. It becomes second nature for us to evaluate our own biases, rather than to simply blame other people and reduce them in our minds to one-word descriptions. When we really think about it, we understand that "In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too." (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, by way of my awesome brother Mike)

Unconscious competence = being so good at doing something that it doesn't require concentration or thought.

It takes practice.

Tomorrow might be worse than today. I can't promise our boys that their mom will be fine. But I can choose not to place blame when bad things happen. I can learn, grow, and take note from so many good people who have served us during these last 50 days—donations, childcare, meals, shopping, filling in at church and work, a listening ear.

I can choose compassion over criticism.

I can't fix this. We hope the doctors can. Or the juicer. But I can choose to become more self-aware, to give others more of a chance. Blaming or judging others can use up a lot of my available energy. I will choose instead to focus on my boys and my beautiful wife: my inspiration, my best friend, future cancer survivor.


"And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good."  Doctrine & Covenants 122:7



Go Team Liz.