If you finish your vegetables, you can have dessert. What’s the thinking here? If we eat enough healthy stuff then we are counterbalancing unhealthy stuff and then they neutralize they other? Well that’s just not how things work digestively. Unhealthy things are unhealthy things and the body needs to process additives and preservatives the same way regardless how much of the other stuff there is.
People make these cognitive misconnections for many, many things unnecessarily and gum up outcomes that could otherwise be more productive.
Consider doing someone the favour of buying them something from a store that they requested. If that thing doesn’t work, should they not reimburse you? What if they decide they don’t want it anymore. Is it yours to return? For those unclear, the favour (which was generous) was the single transaction of purchase and to make the good available. The minimal duty to this favour is to reimburse. Irrespective whether the good is delivered, broken, picked up, desired, ugly, all of these conditions fall outside of the duty to reimburse. Why? Because if that person purchased it themselves they would be in the same predicament and therefore have to resolve any issues themselves. People who incorrectly attribute or misconnect these subsequent conditions with the favour are likely not going to generate a good outcome and receive future favours.
Some of the misconnections are embedded in social and relationship norms. When two people are dating, are they obligated to take vacations together? When two people cohabitate, is it a truism that this obligates them to share a bed at night? When people marry, are they obligated to share finances? Do you need to marry your best friend? Somehow we have convinced ourselves that these connections are appropriate and anything less would suggest a lack of love or commitment.
Therein exists the obfuscating factor. The connection has been attached to symbology that if not respected is symbolic of discord. Imagine not presenting a diamond engagement ring when proposing marriage but rather offering a cheeseburger. Practically, the cheeseburger has more value to the recipient (it can be eaten) but ‘love’ and ‘commitment’ exist in a diamond, and rings are longer lasting than most cheeseburgers and are far more attractive when worn.
Retailers, governments, schools, service industries, professional groups and lots of other institutions have successfully created these misconnections intentionally to better serve their own interests for many decades and many are deeply ingrained, often because they play to our insecurities and impulses. It’s pretty easy to be convinced we exercised hard enough to deserve a cinnabon, despite the contradictory logic, because our sacrifice (the misconnection that is elicited from our emotionality) ought to be satisfied. We should buy flowers for people because flowers demonstrate thoughtfulness (the misconnection) when what’s often more thoughtful would be verbalized condolences or to spend an hour actively listening to that person. We should not move because this place is our home is a common misconnection that anchors a household needlessly to a specific locale despite the opportunities available and proven relocation success experienced by many in the world because a false connection was created to appease insecurity.
Misconnections form the roots of prejudice through stereotyping. We erroneously extrapolate instances to represent groups. Some police abuse their power. Some Germans participated in war crimes. Some males are misogynists. Some gun owners commit crimes with their guns. “Some” does not equal “all”, and it is cogitative poverty to substitute one word for another. Why do we do this? Because human brains are highly fearful and attempt to find cause-and-effect relationships to categorize fears and consequently live in fearful ways. Oceans contain sharks and sharks are scary so I avoid the ocean. Relationships can be painful and so I engage in them superficially to avoid being vulnerable. These are, of course, misconnections as the mind wove together an oversimplified cause-and-effect relationship.
In the workplace, connections may not be so emotionally-generated because there are so many things in motion it’s sometimes just a lack of knowledge. It’s very common for people to confuse flows of goods, money, information and permission. I can’t teach process reengineering in a blog, but when discussing processes and outcomes, each step has prerequisites before it can complete. Maybe your goods cannot be used before approval is received, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be shipped and arranged so they are ready to use. Extinct your false connectors by questioning what appears to be the limiting factor in all processes.
This blog is not about proxies and anchoring, which do appear often in misconnection, this blog attempts to illuminate how connectors are invented to link things that are not linked, often with powerful emotionality and symbolism, sometimes simply from lack of knowledge. Misconnections also result in misadapatations. With this awareness, now we need to think about the merits of breaking the connection.
Workplaces are pretty straightforward insofar as improving throughput by removing misconnections. They also help parties collaborate more closely the more extraneous gobbledygook is removed. On an individual level, false connections sabotage otherwise authentic and organic experiences. They create expectations and forego the opportunity to co-create something unique and special between two parties. Imagine if there were no such thing as an engagement ring or one-knee proposal; how do you think people would propose? Or would they propose at all? Would marriage exist as an institution? I’d wager that what people in love would co-create instead would blow our minds and be far more meaningful.
Misconnections have a way of tossing the baby with the bathwater (what a great old expression!) When injured we convalesce in bed and watch TV. When depressed we lay on the couch and eat ice cream. We are misconnecting that some amount of inability creates complete disability. There is a powerful expression that goes, “don’t let the things you can’t do stop you from doing the things you can do.” Realize when you have made a misconnection and rid yourself of it so you can live authentically and to the fullest of your capacity in a moment.
