Some Poor Habits negatively affect your ability to realize success and achieve wealth in life. If you subscribe to this website or have read any of my media articles, you know I spend a lot of my time talking about Poor Habits.
But there are other Poor Habits that have little to do with success and wealth. They simply make you an evil human being. Prejudice is one of those Poor Habits.
The definition of prejudice is as follows:
A preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
At its best, prejudice is simple ignorance, also known as a lack of knowledge or being uninformed.
At its worse, prejudice is indoctrinated hatred. You have been indoctrinated by your parents or your environment into hating certain things about others that do not align with your ideology or beliefs.
Prejudice comes in many forms such as racism, religious bigotry, sexism, ethnic or cultural bias and sexual orientation intolerance. It’s one thing to disagree with the way others go about their lives, but prejudice often elevates disagreement to hatred.
This prejudice Poor Habit is typically a Generational Habit. Generational Habits are passed down by parents or the environment in which you live from one generation to the next.
Generational Habits are among the hardest habits to eliminate because they are so inculcated in us from a very young age.
Nicolas Christakis, a Yale University professor and leading researcher on socially contagious behaviors, found that habits are contagious, passed along by our families and our environment.
According to a well-known Brown University study on habits by Dr. Pressman, we forge most of our habits, including thinking habits, by the age of nine. Thinking habits include our beliefs, attitudes and prejudices. Since we are primarily under the care of our parents as children, our parents are the font of many of the thinking habits we forge during our childhood. And these thinking habits stay with us into our adulthood.
But, like every habit, once you become aware that you have it, habit change becomes possible.
We live in a world where the prejudice Poor Habit has run amok. It’s been hijacked by politicians and their lackeys, with political agendas that require pitting segments of society against one another. It’s called Identity Politics and the objective of Identity Politics is to incite prejudice in order to drive a wedge into society. Unfortunately, it is an agenda that is succeeding.
If human beings are ever to live in harmony with one another, it’s imperative that this prejudice Poor Habit be eliminated. Awareness opens the door to all habit change. Self-assessment forces awareness and makes habit change possible. That is why Self-Assessment is the first Rich Habit – it starts the habit change process.
P.S. If you want to learn more about the demoralizing effects of prejudice, read Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s latest book: Coach Wooden and Me
About Thomas C. Corley
Speak Your Mind