Episode 159: Hidden Biases are Holding You Back

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to ask you a question. Do you have any hidden biases from yourself? Do you react physically, mentally in a weird negative way when you see something or someone. Let me tell you a story. A couple of days ago, I was in the store. My wife was ahead of me, and I told her, go ahead into the store, I'll be right behind you. Came to the store 3 minutes behind her, and as I entered the store, literally, I didn't get a couple of feet, a couple of meters into the store And to the side of my eyes, I saw somebody jumping out of the side room of the store. This woman had food in her mouth, running out of the side door. And I go, nope, been through this before, I'm out of here. So I quickly make a U-turn and I walk out the store. This store is in one of these malls where the walls go up, but, um, each store is not connected. This is open air, so the sound goes from one store to another, right? They all share the common ceiling. So I go to the next store that's right beside it, and I could hear the woman saying something very loudly to the young lady who looks like she was a trainee behind the cash register. And I'm in the store and I don't pay anything, buy it, right? 30 seconds later, my wife calls me on the phone and says, where are you? I said, I'm in the store next door. She then says, what happened? And I go, okay, what happened? She goes, the woman in the store came out yelling to the trainee woman and said very loudly in front of my face, my wife standing right there, we have to keep people like them out of the store.

They're bad.

Those people are so bad. You can't trust them. The young girl looked at her strangely and said, um, 'How are we supposed to know who to keep out? We can't trust people like them.' Then the young girl asked her, 'Are we supposed to judge them on their color?' And the woman said, 'Yes.' I entered the store right behind my wife. My wife is white. Blonde hair, blue-green eyes. I came 30 minutes later, so I didn't see any association. My wife got to see up close and personal what it's like to be a person who's not white entering a store. And this is a store that sold— sells curtains, things for your bathroom. This is not a high-end store. This is just one of those sort of chashka stores. There's not, you know, nothing special about it. This woman working at the store has hidden biases. You call her racist, but what I want to take it to a higher level for all of us to think, are there things that we see or words that trigger us? For example, if I say the name Trump, how do you react? Now, you may— when it comes to Trump, we have enough data to know that that's no biases. That guy is just different. But what about people? When you see somebody of color walking down the street, what is the first thing you think about? What is the first thing you physically do? This woman's first reaction was, as soon as she saw someone of color walking into a store, while in the middle of her lunch, she stopped her lunch and ran out like there was a fire. What do you do? Do you react?

Not of color.

I'm asking about anything. What are some of your hidden reactions? So somebody at work, do you act like some of that in your personal life? The person you're married to, the person that you're dating, do you have hidden biases against them? Do you have hidden biases against certain things, certain brands, certain colors, certain shirts, certain type of shoes? We all do. We all have our own flavor, our own taste for certain things. And the things that we don't like, we react to them. So much so that some people get up in the middle of their lunch and start running out with food falling out of their mouth. What are some of your hidden biases? I think that's a really interesting question. I've been thinking about it ever since this incident happened. I've been thinking about not so much the incident that has happened so often that it's just added to the list. And the list I would have gone through so many pens is ridiculous, running out of ink.

But why?

What are these things that we have? We're not even aware of our hidden biases. And I think this is interesting because many of you listening are probably going, I don't have any, because it's a hidden one. So this is what you need to do. Ask the people closest to you, do you have any biases? Ask them if they think they know any of your biases. I'm gonna tell you something, the closer that person is to you, the more time they spend with you, the longer their list will be of you. And that's gonna be a tough conversation because you're gonna be like, no, I don't, no, I don't. They're hidden biases. They're things we do. I'll give you another example. Quite often while I walk down the street, if there's a woman approaching me, she will take both her hands and close the top of her blouse or sweater or whatever to protect her breasts. I absolutely have absolutely no idea why women do this. I have never heard of, of a man reaching and grabbing a woman's breast as they walk by each other unless they're married or dating or something. I've never seen on the news. I've never heard of this practice. And this is when people are like across the street from each other. Very bizarre. Hidden biases. When you see somebody of a different religion, different color, different hairstyle, somebody who's bald, somebody with a mohawk, somebody with pink hair, blue hair, what are all the things you think? We have triggers of hidden biases. Somebody who wears different type of clothes, somebody's from a different town. I just want to raise to light that we as human beings have hidden biases. And what you need to do is to figure out and start understanding what are your hidden biases. We all have them. I have them. I must have them. I know I have them. What are yours? Go forth and spread beauty and light. I don't have any conclusion. I don't have an answer to what to do with these hidden biases, and nor does anyone else do. Because when you can start finding your hidden biases, when you can start listing them, then you're really on your way to being the person who you truly want the world to be and experience of you. But until we address our hidden biases, the way we're reacting when we're amongst other people and when we're acting by ourselves, we're acting on a level that we don't want to. We're not even aware that we're being so negative, though, so deceitful, so disrespectful. I think this is really interesting and insanely important. But it's one of the hardest things, lessons of growth, self-growth, that they are to find and then address and then correct your hidden biases. Because they're hidden, they're so hard. But what I want you to do is be aware of the thoughts you have when you see the people, you see the things you see. The stupid one is when When you see somebody driving a Ferrari, what do you think? That's a lot of people think not very nice things about the person with the Ferrari, but you don't know what that person has done. You don't know if that person has worked like, you know, their butt off for the last 10, 20, 30 years. You never know. Maybe they not— and they killed it on crypto and they got it within 5 days of buying crypto. That's easy. But we don't know the story. Does anybody know your story? Does anybody have the right to look at you like crap? To look at you and judge you.

They don't know.

We don't know anyone's story. You don't know the person across the street from you, the person down the hall from you, the person you walk by in the store, in school, at work. We don't know their story. I've been meeting a lot more of my neighbors because now it's summertime. And I asked them how things been going and how's been the time of COVID Man, their stories are painful. I'd have never known by looking at them and their smiling faces and everything looks normal. Let's not judge and let's try to find these hidden biases that we have that we judge people we don't even know we're judging them. Just want to bring that to light.

I love you.

I care for you. And let's all try to be a little bit better to one another. Until next time.

Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com. And you can also subscribe to the newsletter, or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.