The skill of rationalization allows for procrastination, but even odder is that it often works to accomplish its goal. While it appears as self-sabotage, it shifts labor onto others: if you can get enough people invested in your success, they will carry you forward due to their anxiety watching you fail.
Tag: denial
- Theme: Self
Delusions are necessary
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1–2 minutesTo see clearly we should look to reality.
Yet the insensate brutality of reality will destroy you.
Maintaining delusions is what allows us to fully live: to thrive, rather than just survive, because to only survive is existentially meaningless.
- Theme: Self
talking about the weather
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1–2 minutesSpoken to me: "A little rain never hurt anyone, but a lot can kill you."
Of course, all excesses kill, but avoidance of discomfort is a smaller, rationalized death.
- Theme: Self
The stress trap
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1–2 minutesYou are obligated to do something unpleasant, so you turn it into a chore or task.
Your body notices the stress and amplifies it.
The trap is to remain yourself while under this excessive strain: to be authentic, kind, and empathetic, to be reasonable and open instead of the tight, narrow thing your body wants you to become. - Theme: Self
Wolves at the door
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1–2 minutesYou built a nice place. Oddly, it attracts dysfunctional people who attempt to tear it down and poison your harmony.
You cannot simply retreat: you must use the nice space as a power source. Let them in or fight them off, but hiding enables the destruction. - Theme: Growth
Justifying your actions: the chain of responsibility
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1–2 minutesTo own your actions is a false start: we all justify our actions.
“I was fooled. I was angry. I had to do it or else worse things would have happened. I did it to protect others. It was in my nature. It was right. I believed.”
After seeing the destruction spread from your actions, the temptation is to 1) not act anymore or 2) to overreact in the opposing direction.
Reasoning, while helpful, has the danger of 1) creating excuses and 2) solidifying the burden into motivating purpose.
The issue of owning what you do is the chain of responsibility that can weigh you down, warping your nature. Beyond owning our actions and learning from them, we must also be able to disown them (negate their influence).
partial idea from James Islington
- Theme: Growth
Reasons are not Rational
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1–2 minutesEveryone has a reason for their actions. (If not, we can create one for them.) "Reason" is synonymous with rationality, but to be "reasonable" is to conform or compromise, not to use logic. To "have a reason" is to justify a subjective position that seldom includes air-tight dialectics.
In short, we privilege reason but mainly use it to excuse our lack of it.
- Theme: Self
When sincerity disappears
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1–2 minutesWhen you doubt sincerity, words become merely a performative script: an aesthetic affect played as a game.
When sincerity disappears, so does trust. The byproduct of acidic cynicism dissolves communal bonds, isolating individuals into performative identities donned as costumes, and swapped just as quickly. - Theme: Self
Going backwards to find joy
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1–2 minutesPlease return to something you were once good at and rediscover joy.
The world can taint and warp our desires, turning spontaneous happiness into capitalized products and behaviors. Going back to that one thing from childhood can cut through the enveloping layers of despair, cynicism, and falsity to recover the glow inside. - Theme: Growth
reason over results
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1–2 minutesAs a somewhat intelligent individual, I am better at excuse-making and ad-hoc explanations than I am overcoming.