Do as I Say, Not as I Do

It’s easy to preach, but it’s hard to be congruent with whatever philosophies you espouse. Certainly there are people who do as they say they do, but I suspect the majority of those who (like myself) write blog posts on self-help themes don’t practice much of what they preach.

Consider fitness gurus. People who tend to be physically fit are often that way not just because they work hard, but because they’ve won the genetic lottery in some way. Research suggests that fitness outcomes are influenced by genetics anywhere from 40-70%, with one twin study finding that genetic factors account for 47-80% of fitness trait variation. My unscientific observations align with this research.

Someone who’s less naturally physically fit can certainly achieve similar (or even higher) levels of fitness, but to do so they would have to override their natural tendencies. This might mean battling their body’s set point weight or fighting against their natural appetite regulation—things that come effortlessly to others.

This post isn’t really about nature versus nurture or fitness specifically, but rather about how the most vocal advocates often say what people want to hear without necessarily practicing what they preach.

Politicians are perhaps the quintessential example of the “do as I say not as I do” mantra. We’ve all seen examples of politicians who champion one cause publicly while privately behaving in contradictory ways. A 2019 study in Political Psychology found that voters are surprisingly willing to forgive this hypocrisy in politicians they support, while harshly judging it in those they oppose.

As a hypothetical example, imagine a politician who campaigns on anti-immigration rhetoric but quietly employs undocumented workers for their household at below minimum wage. They pander to their voter base while simultaneously benefiting from the very situation they publicly condemn.

The point is to be skeptical of anyone who preaches anything—including me—and rather than listening to what people say, focus on what they do.

If you work in any field related to human behavior, you quickly learn that asking people what they think is often unreliable. This is why political polls can be so inaccurate—they measure what people say, not what they actually do. In behavioral economics, this is known as the value-action gap.

Election outcomes often surprise us because people vote strategically rather than for their preferred candidate, especially in places with winner-takes-all voting systems. Better systems like ranked choice voting can help, though they’re not perfect solutions.

To truly understand human behavior, you need to observe actions without people knowing they’re being observed. The observer effect is so powerful that it forms the basis for how we design scientific studies. Double-blind experiments—where neither the subject nor the researcher knows who’s in which group—help control for this bias, but some error is inevitable.

Measuring human behavior is inherently complex because surface-level observations rarely reveal underlying intentions. If you track someone’s food purchases to understand their diet, you might see they frequent McDonald’s but never know if they’re going for the Happy Meal toys rather than the food.

The takeaway? The gurus, the preachers, the podcasters—they’re all just humans like the rest of us. They might offer valuable insights, but remember: nobody deserves uncritical admiration. Judge people by their actions, not their words.