Objectivity
By Harry Petsanis and Donna McCance
When you are objective, you are not influenced by personal feelings, emotions, or opinions when you consider and represent facts.
Not being influenced does not mean you do not consider information; it means you are able to decipher that which is not a fact and eliminate it from consideration when relaying information and making decisions.
When you are influenced by someone else, it means you are changing your opinions based on what they say. Sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a bad thing. When you are objective, you take into consideration information other than your own subjective thoughts, which may benefit you, or hurt you.
Sometimes objectivity can be complicated by the fact that while you’re trying to be objective by listening to others, their ideas and thoughts may not be objective. You need to carefully consider what you are hearing and take that into consideration.
The problem with objectivity is that what people interpret as being objective is in reality infected with the biases of subjectivity, their own interpretation of reality and truth.
The majority of people are not able to be objective about things because they are not objective about themselves. We live in a world where people lie, cheat, and do things that benefit themselves at the detriment of others, but when you ask each individual to define themselves, most will say they’re honest, trustworthy, empathetic, and always put others first.
If that was true, we wouldn’t live in a world where people lie, cheat, steal, and neglect others for their own self-serving purposes. What that tells us is that when you ask a person to define themselves, they are going to give you answers that are subjective and based on what they really don’t know about themselves or don’t want to know about themselves.
Most people tell other people what they believe is what they want to hear, and more significantly, they’re trying to show them someone who is not who they truly are. They’re not just telling you what they think you want to hear, they’re trying to show you what they want you to see, which is rarely who they are.
The reason people's lives are not where they want them to be is because they’re not objective. People often go out of their way to portray themselves as something they’re not to others because they’ve spent a lifetime portraying themselves to themselves as something they’re not. That lack of accountability is what has led them to a life of delusion and dysfunction.
Introspection is the practice of examining your own mental and emotional self and how you react to things. It is the process of self-awareness and self-assessment of your emotions and your reactions to them. If you want to reverse the course that you are on, you need to become objective about yourself. You need to assess yourself honestly, accurately, and acknowledge the things about yourself that you refused to acknowledge before.
We can also learn more about ourselves by truly listening to others. Sometimes we become so defensive when someone offers us criticism, we immediately dismiss what they are trying to tell us. It’s important to pause and think “is what this person telling me true?” Sometimes it isn’t, but sometimes it is. You can learn a lot about yourself by how other people view you, which you may find is not the way you intended to portray yourself to be (or even knew yourself to be).
When we become objective about ourselves and start seeing ourselves clearly, it becomes much easier to see everyone and everything else objectively and clearly as well.
Once you do that, then your life will start changing for the better.
About the Authors
Harry Petsanis is a philosopher of human nature, mindset specialist, and lifelong fitness and wellness advisor. He is a writer and author, with three published books: “The Truth is A Lie,” “The Logical Path to Life,” and "Knowing Me from A to Z, A Child's Mindset," which he co-authored with Donna McCance, M.Ed.. Harry has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. He has an intense passion for psychology and the human condition.
Donna McCance, M.Ed. is a business administrator, writer, author, licensed teacher and principal/vice principal with over 20 years experience teaching in elementary education and educational leadership. She has a Masters in Education, Masters in Human Services Management, Bachelors in Business Administration and Associates in Business Administration.
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The Truth is A Lie" and "The Logical Path To Life"
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to order Harry Petsanis's and Donna McCance's newly published book
"Knowing Me From A to Z, A Child's Mindset"
To learn about Harry Petsanis, go to his website