Rationalize This!

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life’s problems. -James Cash Penney (1875-1971), entrepreneur and businessman who founded J.C. Penney store in 1902.

One thing that I have learned as a real estate agent coach is that people will say the craziest things to rationalize why something does not get done! You know what I mean because we all do it…it started a long time ago…”the dog ate my homework!” Sound familiar? As a matter of fact we only seem to get better at it as time goes on…no really….think about it…”I can’t come to work today because a plane crashed in my back yard and I was up all night saving lives!”

But seriously, let’s stop and think about how much energy we put into rationalizing why we avoid doing so many things that really matter to us…I mean things that will determine whether we survive or thrive! Ever got caught by the boss not staying on task because you allowed some personal distraction into the day…texting…facebook…office chit chat? When you really sit back and think about it, that’s stealing! When somebody is paying you to do a job by the hour then they should have the right to expect a return on their dollar…no? Yet when you turn in a half way effort and then get passed over for a promotion do you start to rationalize that it’s because the boss doesn’t like you, doesn’t appreciate you, has a gender or racial bias?

Who are you really kidding or bluffing when you throw up a smoke screen? Rationalization is really the offensive weapon of denial. When you truly don’t want to face reality and hold yourself accountable, then it just seems easier to deflect. Yet the reality is that you’re just creating a ‘lumpy rug’ in your own temple…how long can you continue to sweep things under the rug and not confront them before they begin to cause real problems?

Let me propose this challenge…why do you think it is that so many people are now dependent on alcohol and drugs? Does it make sense that if we rationalize away the problems in our lives then we just might need something to make the pain go away? We are simply trying to kill the disease of pain that denial causes!

The fact of the matter is that we are simply in self- protective mode…certainly there are those who are in such denial that they would laugh if you even suggested that this discussion was about them…but the truth is that it’s about all of us! The very reason we get off track and have more problems than victories is because we are not facing them head on! Why not listen to constructive criticism when it comes our way? Why not consider the other side of the argument before we react? Why not take a night to “sleep on it?”

Rationalization is like a six shooter holstered on our hip, ready to be drawn out with lightning speed to strike down any challenge that hurts us deep to the core. Get over it! Everybody hurts! I think we just have this ridiculous concept that we are inadequate compared to the next person…of course they must be perfect because they have money, looks, intelligence, friends…whatever it is! Do we really want to be somebody else?

I’ll say this many times over even though it’s just mastering the obvious…we are all special in some way but we are also all vulnerable too! We need to find that balance and discover the true humility that it takes to accept all sides of humanity…okay, I will not go too deep here because there is no need…simply embrace the fact that we all screw up, we are all lazy in some areas and of course we are all crazy in many ways!

I can remember as a young guy thinking that I was going to conquer the business world in a half hour! Naive…that would be a grave understatement! Shortly thereafter, I had a very difficult time coming to the ultimate conclusion that I was just “average Joe!” I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, rather a classification that I was just like everyone else around me. Sure maybe I had some things that made me special…maybe I was wired to do that one thing better than most, but when it came to realizing that I was bound to make a ton of embarassing mistakes, I began to embrace them.

I think Maxwell Maltz in his book The New Psycho-Cybernetics…one of my favorites…makes a very valid point when he says we are not our mistakes! Mistakes are nothing more than bits of feedback that we get from the world and should only be used to help us determine if we are off course and help us recalculate our direction to line up with our goals. Sort of like a guided missle that adjusts it’s trajectory when it has been blown off course!

Our simple problem is that we have the ability to feel emotions and those emotions cloud the judgment of that on-board computer. Not only do they mess with it to throw us off course in a mechanical way, those emotions have also grown an attack module: rationalization! It’s nothing more than a protection device that has evolved into a harmful computer bug!

So what can you do with this thinking tool? Stop making excuses for everything! Don’t tell the boss why you’re late, just apologize, roll up your sleeves, go to work and stay late! Don’t tell yourself you’re going to stop abusing drugs, alcohol, food or whatever makes you temporarily comfortable, just start somewhere! Take a minute to embrace the mistakes, think about why they happened, understand whether or not you are on the right track and course correct. But most importantly, listen to to the words you use! Are you deflecting? Are you rationalizing away instead of embracing the truth…because we all really know that life is what it is and given the opportunity to keep it real…not one of us would rationalize this away!

Tags: Add new tag, Excuses, J.C. Penney, Maxwell Maltz, Motivation, Self Improvement