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Watch as this Marine’s wife, Renee, remembers her husband. Watch as she talks about their wedding and how her emotions change with each memory. She is a beautiful example for the study of honesty, too.
Last night, CBS 60 Minutes’ Katie Couric interviewed the hero pilot, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, of Flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson three weeks ago.
If you want to see the remainder of the interview, go to CBS’s website.
Read moreIt is simply fascinating to watch Sully speak, and to listen to him talk to air controllers in the moments before impact. His voice is incredibly focused, and out-of-this-world calm, considering that he is at the helm of an aircraft that is disastrously malfunctioning and over one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Add to that, it is his actions that will ultimately decide not only if he lives or dies, but whether another 155 souls survive as well.
Sully has great control over his emotions. He is a man who lives his life by reason and logic. I am sure those who know him well would tell us he has always been an emotional rock. He is and always was in control. And he remained in control and kept his wits about him under the most harrowing of circumstances. It’s simply amazing.
Not only was he amazing in his focus and control, but even after everyone had disembarked from the sinking aircraft, and Sully was on dry land, he still wasn’t at peace until he could truly confirm, again, that all souls on board had made it out alive and were safe. And that was after he walked the empty plane twice before he disembarked! He is truly a remarkable man: a man of deep ethical values (Did you see this?).
As Sully puts it himself, he believed his life experiences leading up to that day were all there to help him in these critical moments.
Yet when we watch the the majority of Sully’s interview, his emotions are muted, and his expressions are minimal. He stares at the camera and the audience intently as he recalls his story, and very uniquely, he almost never breaks his gaze as he recollects and talks of his ordeal that day. He doesn’t habitually look up or down as most people do when they recall things. At one point, Sully even says the experience was unbelievable, and when he does, he shakes his head from side to side.
Captain Sully gives us what most would people would consider a heap of red flags that hint at dishonesty, if we didn’t know he was telling the truth here. He experienced a horrific nightmare that ended almost magically, and yet Sully shows very little emotions until the end of the show.
I personally think Sully still hasn’t come to terms with everything that has happened. He is still processing it, trying to make sense of it, and perhaps still in shock. He even commented that he has lost sleep because he wasn’t sure he could not have done things better! Simply unbelievable.
For me, all of Sully’s behaviors are genuine and true because they match his personality. If I didn’t know the truth here, I would likely hone in on the truth, due to what I call paralleling. When I look at Sully, I get an immediate sense of his personality. His facial features and emotions identify to me that he is a man who is very humble, giving and kind. I would be able to confidently speculate, based on that, that he is a man who is reserved, without an ego, and without a temper. He is quieter than most and with that, I would not be surprised by his lack of expression or emotion. It would not stand out to me.
So next time you see a clue or two, think twice before saying “deceptive”. You may convict an incredible human being, like Sully, if you don’t know the nuances of personality and behavior.
Today MSN has an interesting article about self-deception:
The Endorsement: Self-Delusion
What do you think about it?
Randy Pausch is one incredible human being and every person should hear Randy’s “Last Lecture”. Yes, that includes you!
His messages are fabulous. I think he is a wake up call to so many of us. So many people live life checked-out and he, who is dying, gives us an incredible message on how to live. I love every one of his life messages.
When I see honesty, and I try to show other people, I am not always able to get what I see across to other people. I don’t know how to, actually. How do you, for example, point out sincerity when you see it? How do you identify a genuine expression?
It’s a bit of a quagmire for me.
When someone lies, I can usually point out the clues that I see that support my hypothesis, and usually people will see some of them. I can identify inconsistencies in fact, and behavior. I can point out smirks as well as smiles that don’t make sense, or that have odd timing. I can identify inordinate pauses in speech, strange word usage, or clues to fear when no fear should be present. But with truth, there is nothing to point out. There are no red flags, no oddities, nothing unusual. The behavior in question is normal, as expected. The emotions are genuine and sincere.
Read moreMany times when I watch people who are trying to identify honesty, I detect an emotional bias that skews their ability to register emotions, and facts correctly. Because of their belief system, they want to see something, yet no matter how hard they try to scale their fundamental beliefs, they are unable to do so. People will even speculate that the person speaking didn’t mean exactly what they said, and the person I am watching won’t think twice about rearranging the spoken words to make the message mean what they think it should mean.
Other times, people are not able to interpret emotions: they misinterpret the subtle expressions of sadness, and mistakenly assume that the sad person is callous and cold and showing no emotions. Many times, people miss the expression of contempt completely, as if it never had flashed before them.
One thing is for sure: I think our emotions are one of the biggest obstacles we have to seeing the truth. That is one reason I avoid writing about, or talking about politics and religion—two highly emotional subjects that no matter what is the truth, we will convince ourselves our beliefs are correct, and that others are misjudging the true meaning of what really is…