It is usual that on many occasions people tend to justify themselves to get out of a situation instead of accepting that they have made a mistake for a variety of reasons, such as pride, fear of retaliation, or fear of looking bad in front of certain people. However, risking accepting the consequences of our actions will calm us down and make us feel better. will allow us to live in a calmer and more confident way, however much these may be wrong in certain moments.
As with any other defense mechanism, justification is an emotional survival response that can have long-term negative consequences for the person. In the following Psychology-Online article, we show you seven tips on how to stop justifying yourself
Index
- Why do we justify ourselves?
- Become aware of our automatism of self-justification
- Inquire into the reason for this automatic response
- Leaving the past behind and proposing to start anew
- work on humility
- Analyze the advantages of admitting your own mistakes
- Use new experiences as reinforcement
- Enjoy a new life without justifications
Why do we justify ourselves?
The main reason why people justify ourselves is because we are unable, at that moment, to accept our mistake. There are many factors that can determine denial of our mistaken behavior, such as the fear of being recriminated, trying to maintain a certain image of oneself, for pride and lack of humility, as a means of protection against the outside, as a consequence of high levels of self-demand, the difficulty to take responsibility for one's own actions, etc.
The main basis of all these causes is a certain degree of fear and insecurity that has led to the person to make use of this justification mechanism as a means of protecting his person, image or self-esteem.
Become aware of our automatism of self-justification.
First of all, a first step to stop justifying yourself is become aware that this mechanism is part of our habitual behavior.
Realizing this and observing the great disadvantages of acting in this way will help us strengthen the determination to try to abandon such automatic irrational behavior.
Inquire into the reason for this automatic response.
While becoming aware of our justifying behavior is a very good first step, that alone will not be enough to achieve it. Defense mechanisms are anchored to past experiences that caused us some pain, such as when we are reprimanded for having made a mistake or left aside for being insecure. Likewise, it can also be due to certain irrational beliefs about ourselves or about how the world works, such as thinking that we must be perfect to be loved.
In any case, despite not being an easy path, inquire into the specific reason that is chaining us to said automatic response will help us a lot to understand our operation and to see our problem with a new look.
Leaving the past behind and proposing to start over.
Abandon behaviors that have been created as defense mechanisms It is not easy, since we unconsciously feel that if we stop performing these behaviors, we will We will feel defenseless and insecure, we will suffer again that pain from which we protect ourselves and many other reasons. irrational.
However, it is very important become aware that our current moment has nothing to do with it and who we are today with nothing related to that painful past situation. By reinforcing the idea of the disadvantages that acting in this way will cause in our lives, we will achieve motivate us to leave the past behind and dare to live the present as something new, joyful and sure.
Work on humility.
Once we have decided to embark on the path of leaving behind the justifying behavior, the next step will be work on accepting one's own mistakes as something natural that is part of life. Humility is a very important quality that does not represent weakness at all, rather the opposite.
In fact, humble people grow and advance much faster on the path by easily accepting their mistakes, facing them, and working to correct them from there.
Analyze the advantages of admitting your own mistakes.
Being humble can have many advantages, including the courage to recognize oneself imperfect and in a continuous process of personal improvement. As we have mentioned in the previous section, acknowledging one's own mistakes is, in reality, the only way to improve and develop personally.
Justification, on the contrary, paralyzes growth by preventing one from recognizing one's own mistakes and, therefore, nullifying the possibility of correcting them and learning from them. In this article, we tell you how to learn from past mistakes. At the same time, Recognizing the mistakes made will encourage others to trust us, aware that, whatever happens, we will be sincere, coherent and we will take responsibility for our actions.
Use new experiences as reinforcement.
After experiencing in new situations the consequences of taking responsibility for our actions and accepting our failures and mistakes we will be able to verify how the internal tension derived from always justifying ourselves disappears and our internal state calms down little by little. bit.
Despite the fact that at first it may be difficult because fear and insecurity will overwhelm us and make it difficult to make the decision, if we persist in the On the way we will see how it is really worth abandoning this childish behavior and replacing it with this new, more authentic manifestation of ourselves. Act more transparently, responsibly and sincerely it will bring us closer and more deeply unite the people around us.
Enjoy a new life without justifications.
After verifying how living justifying ourselves had considerably limited our freedom and good personal relationships and having learned to live in a more authentic way, we only have left strengthen this new way of life and, why not, serve as an example for those people who remain attached to justification to protect themselves from irrational fears.
Nothing better than the experience itself to become teachers of personal change.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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