From childhood we receive a great deal of information that helps shape our beliefs and values. On the other hand, society has been changing its values very rapidly, and sometimes these changes contradict what we carry as stigmas and stereotypes from our childhood and youth.
In this case, we have a quite interesting paradigm. If we refuse to accept society's changes, we will be seen as backward, outdated, and even prejudiced. But if we completely abandon our values and the teachings we received, we may lose some of our identity and beliefs.
But not everything has to be all or nothing.
Is it possible to coexist with thoughts and behaviors different from our own?
Each of us carries a story filled with values and worldviews, and it is to be expected that these stories and values are not the same for every person. But we live in a society that demands daily interaction with people who hold different views from ours, so we must learn to live with this diversity.
The main quality to be developed in this context is tolerance.
"If between my truth and another person's truth there is tolerance, friction tends not to occur."
The problem is that we want our truth to always prevail over someone else's truth, and we remain in this endless dispute of truths.
Most of the time, accepting difference is difficult, because we create stereotypes and stigmas that we have trouble letting go of.
Wikipedia has an interesting passage:
There are also behavioral stigmas that define and limit aspects of everyday life. For example, the color pink in clothing reserved only for women, and soccer as a men's sport.
But what does this have to do with the professional environment? It has everything to do with it.
Those who work in large companies have the opportunity to interact with many types of people. The natural tendency is for groups to form based on shared thoughts and values, and for these groups to defend themselves and their ideas. This is natural behavior.
But when this starts to influence professional decisions, the company begins to lose credibility, because promotions start happening based on affinity rather than merit, or dismissals occur because someone does not share the same ideas rather than because of low performance. This is a risk companies face if they are not careful about this type of behavior.
Another important point is not letting stigmas get in the way of professional growth. Sometimes professionals are labeled and stamped with only a specific skill and are denied opportunities that require other skills, because the company does not believe they are capable of developing other kinds of work. But in reality, what is missing is the opportunity for these people to take on other roles.
I like to bring up the case of Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr, who was considered one of the most beautiful women in Europe in the 1940s.
But World War II gave her other opportunities to show her greatest talent, which was mathematics. Concerned about the security of radio communications, she was one of the inventors of multi-frequency technology that was essential for wireless communication, thus initiating the pre-mobile era. Without her, we would not be using our cell phones. But what could a beautiful actress from the 1940s possibly know about mathematics and electronics? It is the same as asking today, what can a finance intern possibly know about creativity?
Labeling is the easiest and the most wrong approach. If it is hard to avoid forming a first impression, we should at least give ourselves the right to form other impressions over time, rather than simply placing that individual into group A or group B.
We certainly carry many stigmas with us, and breaking the paradigm of this way of seeing things is not simple, but we should practice this capacity every day.
If we learn to accept each person with their beliefs and stop trying at all costs to convince them that our beliefs are better, we will certainly find other common ground that can unite us and bring us closer to those same people.
In the middle of all this, are we capable of reducing our prejudices and focusing more on the principles of the world we live in?
