It is common that on many occasions people tend to justify themselves to get out of a situation instead of accepting that a mistake has been made for various reasons, such as pride, fear of receiving retaliation or of looking bad in front of certain people. However, risking accepting the consequences of our actions will calm our interior and allow us to live in a calmer and more confident way, no matter how wrong they may be at certain times.
As with any other defense mechanism, justification is an emotional survival response that can have negative consequences for the person in the long term. In the following PsychologyFor article, we show you seven tips on how to stop justifying yourself
The main reason why people justify ourselves is because we are incapable, at that moment, of accepting our mistake. There are many factors that can determine the denial of our wrong behavior, such as the fear of being recriminated, trying to maintain a certain image of oneself, pride and lack of humility as a means of protection against the outside, as a consequence of high levels of self-demand the difficulty in taking responsibility for one’s own actions, etc.
The main basis for all these causes is a certain degree of fear and insecurity that has led the person to use this justification mechanism as a means of protecting their person, image or self-esteem.
Become aware of our automatic self-justification
First of all, a first step to stop self-justifying is become aware that this mechanism is part of our habitual behavior
Realizing this and observing the great disadvantages that come with acting in this way will help us strengthen our determination to try to abandon such automatic irrational behavior.
Find out the reason for this automatic response
Although 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 certain pain, such as when we are reprimanded for making mistakes 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, investigate the specific reason What is chaining us to this automatic response will help us a lot to understand our functioning and see our problem with a new perspective.
Leave the past behind and propose to start again
Abandoning behaviors that have been created as defense mechanisms is not easy, since we unconsciously feel that, if we stop performing these behaviors, we will feel helpless and insecure, we will again suffer the pain from which we protected ourselves and many other irrational reasons.
However, it is very important become aware that our current moment has nothing to do with it and who we are today with nothing to do with that painful past situation. By reinforcing the idea of the disadvantages that acting in this way will cause in our lives, we will be able to motivate ourselves to leave the past behind and dare to live the present as something new, joyful and safe.
Work on humility
Once we have decided to embark on the path of leaving justifying behavior behind, the next step will be work on accepting your own mistakes as something natural that is part of life. Humility is a very important quality that does not represent weakness at all, but rather the opposite.
In fact, humble people grow and advance much faster along the path by easily accepting their mistakes, facing them and, from there, striving to correct them.
Analyze the advantages of recognizing one’s own mistakes
Being humble can have many advantages, among them the courage to recognize oneself as imperfect and in a continuous process of personal improvement. As we mentioned in the previous section, recognizing one’s own mistakes is, in reality, the only way to improve and develop personally.
Justification, on the contrary, paralyzes growth by preventing recognition of 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, Acknowledging mistakes made will help others trust us aware that, no matter what 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 see how the internal tension derived from always justifying ourselves disappears and our internal state calms down little by little.
Although at first it may be difficult because fear and insecurity will overwhelm us and make the decision made difficult, if we persist on the path we will see how it is really worth abandoning this childish behavior and replacing it with this new manifestation of ourselves. more authentic. Act in a more transparent, responsible and sincere way It will bring us closer and unite us more deeply with the people around us
Enjoy a new life without justifications
After seeing how living by justifying ourselves had considerably limited our freedom and good personal relationships and having learned to live in a more authentic way, we are only left with strengthen this new way of life and, why not, serve as an example for those people who continue to cling to justification to protect themselves from irrational fears.
Nothing better than our own experience to become masters of personal change.
This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor 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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