You put your trust into others every day.
Lack of trust can threaten your sanity.
Putting out too much trust isn’t smart either.
Think about all the professionals you work with or rely on. From local librarians to surgeons to government officials.
You trust them to do their job, right? (You probably trust some professionals more than others.)
When it comes to your life, your living your life — any expert advice is still a collection of opinions.
Experts don’t deserve automatic trust
There’s no guarantee an expert in any field has your best interests at heart.
Especially if you’re exchanging money for service.
And what’s more, experts usually don’t have to live with the consequences of your following their advice.
What’s an expert anyway?
Take any controversial issue, there are likely experts on both sides of the story.
Vaccination safety, the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11, the fluoridation of public water — each hotly debated by PhD’s and experts on both sides.
What does that mean?
“Expert” in the context of any highly controversial issue (you’d be surprised how many issues are controversial) lacks weight; it’s a non-issue.
When it comes sensitive topics (especially what you should do in life), it’s not an expert opinion that you’re interested in — it’s the opinion that makes the most sense to you and that you can use to make better sense of your life.
Yes, confirmation bias. No human being is immune to it.
You can’t separate knowledge from worldview
Scientific inquiry is the least biased way to construct human knowledge.
Because of that, people tend to cast scientists as cold, logical, mechanical beings.
But scientists are humans too; they can’t just shed their worldviews when they conduct research.
A study by Roy Spencer and William Braswell, called “On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance,” translates to: “Here’s some NASA data contradicting global warming models.”
When George Noory interviewed Spencer on Coast to Coast AM, Spencer said:
“I try to explain to people that even if we have perfect measurements, which we don’t — if we have perfect measurements of the climate system every day over the whole Earth — that scientists could still come to totally opposite conclusions about how the climate system works in terms of cause and effect. The measurements are the easy part. Figuring out what those measurements mean, in terms of cause and effect, that’s the hard part. And that’s true in a lot of areas in science.”
Yes, you’re an expert
It’s tempting to offshore your response ability to life — to those “more qualified.”
Don’t be fooled. An expert opinion is still an opinion.
What really matters is that the advice you take actually helps you.
You can’t always trust others to look out for your bests interests (by nature, they’re looking out for their best interests). Your best bet is learning to trust yourself. Which does involve getting to know yourself better too.
The more you can trust your own expert opinion — about what you need in life, and why — the more effectively you can leverage the expert opinions and professional expertise of others, to be more effective in life.
What do you think?
Want to learn more about how to trust yourself? Sign up for the free e-class, Your Life is Your Construct.
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