Neglecting Mindfulness: Why I Was the Problem the Whole Time
People really do change. But growth and healing often feel impossible because they happen in the same places we are most anxious to avoid. Sadly, our avoidance is often so effective that we forget it's happening, even while recognizing that something is wrong. So, let this very short visualization exercise serve as a gentle invitation to that uncomfortable place.
Imagine your subconscious mind as if it had its own mysterious identity, and you—the detective—are trying to uncover its secrets. As you sift through clues, you have a shocking realization: your subconscious has been running many autopilot programs behind your back—silently overriding your physical inclinations and natural preferences, even forcing an irrational, overblown hatred of nearly innocuous things like boy bands and people who drive just below the speed limit.
You confront this hidden director of your mental theater, demanding accountability for why it has been hiding your authentic self behind these thick lenses of bias. But rather than looking guilty, your subconscious looks offended and points the finger back at you:
“You haven’t given me clear directions for years! So I’ve been doing my best to keep you alive and sane in an environment of extreme neglect. Do you really not know why I run these programs? The ‘Work hard,’ ‘Put family first,’ ‘Don’t cry,’ ‘Trust no one,’ and ‘Smile, sweetie’ routines all came from a social structure that punished—or excluded—anyone who didn’t follow them. You were the one who recognized that survival meant adopting these rules, so you handed them over to me without a second thought. And look, I get it, you were pretty young when you made many of these decisions. But we are this person until you're willing to process an uncomfortable level of self-reflection and emotionally invest in changes that you claim are “authentic” to you. Remember though, I was never your enemy, I’m still ready and determined to run any autopilot program that brings the best of who we are to life. So, if you’re serious about this, tell me where to start.”
There’s so much in that visualization exercise that we’ll eventually unpack with the assistance of psychologists, philosophers, and every other source of logic and reason available. In saying that, I freely offer that I am not the origin of most of these concepts. I’m just the guy who’s been feverishly gathering and assembling the most valuable puzzle pieces available, to make them digestable and actionable for the people I love. And what I’ve found can be best described from the context of biases, or the autopilot responses that are programmed into our subconcious.
In psychology, biases aren’t synonymous with bigotry and aren’t inherently hateful. Psychology Today defines bias simply as "a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone," emphasizing that biases can indeed be neutral or even positive, guiding our preferences and behaviors without malicious intent (Psychology Today).
Two Types of Inclination
- Physical Inclinations:
What your body naturally wants (rest, tacos, sexual satisfaction). Mostly genetic, but strongly impacted by things like health, hormones, hunger, and medication. - Biased Inclinations:
What your values tell you to want (honesty, kindness, safety, to be physically attractive). Shaped by things like upbringing, society, trauma, and your own late-night overthinking.
The combination of these two inclinations is how you show up in the world. Like it or not, this is the person your friends and family know. And if you don’t like how you’re showing up, your inclinations are what need to be fixed. But, in exclaiming the nearly supernatural power of wisely crafting biases, I hope to never be misunderstood as discounting the critical role of your physical inclinations in shaping your behavior. So, let’s challenge and create amazing biases, but you’ll undermine that effort if you don’t get enough sleep, eat healthy, exercise, and take your meds.
What Do You Really Like?
Imagine you’re halfway through the most delicious dish of your life. You’re vocally praising the chef and savoring every bite. Then a friend taps your shoulder from behind and whispers, “Hey, that’s dog meat.” Suddenly, your whole mouth files a complaint with HR—your taste receptors and gag reflex are suddently staging a revolt. That feeling? That’s bias crashing your party.
See, your body was into it—your physical inclination was like YES, more please! But your bias—the value-laced judgment you carry like a moral compass—jumped in and said, "Dogs are friends, not food!" immediately changing your perception from yum to yuck.
Where Do These Biases Come From?
We aren’t the source of most of our biases. Many were offered to our impressionable minds like installing survival software—bundled with self-esteem, ethics, shame, fear, and family traditions that we typically just accept without reading the fine print. Our human ability to mirror the beliefs and behaviors of others is a massive survival advantage.
In my visualization exercise, even the unchallenged subconscious biases would generally help us be good people. But even with that in mind, unchallenged biases are blind spots . Therefore, failing to challenge them from time to time will nearly guarantee the persistence of bigoted, toxic, or limiting beliefs and behaviors. This is likely why many think they aren’t bigoted while their behaivors tell another story.
None of this is to say we don’t make unique biases of every variety on our own—we just often won’t without significant pleasure or pain to fuel the emotional investment. Unique biases like this often feel out of place to outside observers. For example, my amazing and generally tolerant wife is immediately revolted if I ever lick sauce off a finger (even with clean hands while eating chicken wings) because she was shamed for doing it as a young child.
Biases Under Pressure: The Power of Training
When applied with intentionality, bias, far from limiting you, can protect and empower you. Imagine running away from an attacker at night in a strange city, and the only paths away from them are unknown and could easily lead to a dead end. Now reimagine a similar scenario, but this time you know the path very well. Without having to even think about it, you’re both automatically and intentionally going over, under, and around obstacles that you can confidently use as an advantage, all leading you to a fortress of safety. Wisely crafted and impassioned biases are that ideal path and that fortress of safety. After being established, there is nothing easier in a time of crisis than to take that established path to safety; in fact, it would be difficult to convince yourself to do anything else.
“You don't rise to the occasion; you sink to the level of your training” (Grossman & Christensen, 2004).
Bias is mental training for when your brain doesn’t have time to carefully consider a difficult or complex decision. The healthy version of being confidently decisive happens when you’ve carefully considered many similar scenarios long before the crisis, such that when the moment of crisis comes, the mind quickly checks current context against closest match presidence, using it as a decision making catalyst. This concept is sometimes called the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model, where individuals are able to make quick, effective decisions under pressure by recognizing patterns and drawing on prior knowledge (Recognition-Primed Decision Model).
For example, if you’ve trained a bias toward honesty, then when your boss corners you with “Did you send that email?” and your soul wants to lie its way into another dimension, your autopilot kicks in and blurts out the truth before your mouth can panic.
Taking Control: Building Better Biases
You may not get to choose how much you love chocolate, but you do get to choose how important your health is compared to eating a fifth cookie. And that’s where the real power comes from; it’s deciding what type of person you are, deciding what is authentically important to you, and then firmly determining yourself to live according to that personal ethic.
You just need intentionality—that moment where you say, “You know what? I want to be the kind of person who does the thing, even when it’s hard.”
- Pick a value. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
- Practice acting in line with it. Take reasonable actions today; every action counts.
- Evaluate your performance and make appropriate strategy adjustments.
- Try again every day. Persistence and grit are critical to progress.
Living as the Main Character
In the end, training your biases with intention may not carry the immediate rush of skydiving or the shock of waking to your wildest dream come true, but its impact ripples through every moment of your life.
With each small choice to question a default reaction, to rewrite an outdated “survival software” routine, you reclaim a bit more clarity, courage, and control. Every habit you reshape, every value you reinforce, becomes another bold brushstroke on the canvas of your personal narrative. Bias, intentionally developed, is how you become the type of person who doesn’t flinch when life gets real.
Remember: you are not bound by the drift of past programming. You possess the power to sculpt your own instincts, to transform those tuning knobs from misaligned to masterful. When you choose to act from a place of mindful intention—when you choose to be the author of your own “why” rather than a passenger on autopilot—you step into the role of your own hero. Mistakes will happen, and that’s proof you’re forging a new path. So celebrate each lesson, each moment of insight, and let your triumphs, however small, fuel the next step. Stand tall in the knowledge that every recalibrated bias brings you closer to the person you were always meant to be—undaunted, authentic, and utterly unstoppable.