Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

P.S. The Transcript – Justification: How We Trap Ourselves

Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here today.

And it’s our success training. We’re going to talk about justification and how that traps us and what does it mean.

So I’m here with Senior Master Laura Sanborn.

@1:50 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Thanks for being here today, ma’am. Thank you, sir.

@1:53 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Okay, we’re going to get our stuff moving here. So one of the things about this is… This is us and some stuff about me.

I wanted to start with this quote, that the secret to happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.

And I’m not sure how to pronounce his name, Thucides, I think, Thucides. And the idea here is that we’re going to be happier when we feel like we have control of our environment.

So freedom isn’t just like freedom, like from prison or from a bad part of the world. It’s freedom from our environment.

We can control our environment. And the secret of freedom is having the courage to take action. So let’s talk about what that means a little bit.

And in terms of our topic today, which is justification. Now, another favorite topic I have is excuses and when people make excuses.

And one of the things that we we find is or what that will help is to understand the difference.

So excuses are reasons you give yourself or others why you didn’t succeed or accomplish what you wanted. So for.

For example, if I’m late, I might say, well, hey, the traffic was bad. Sometimes traffic wasn’t bad, but you’ll hear people say that.

If I didn’t meet my numbers in my business, oh, well, it was the economy. It was the people that I talked to just weren’t ready for it or something like that.

If I didn’t get my black belt, didn’t pass my black belt test, oh, well, they didn’t hold the boards right.

They didn’t do this right. The other guy that I competed against was a pain in the butt. That’s an excuse.

Now, the purpose of that is to defer or avoid blame. So it’s so that I don’t have to sound like I failed, and I don’t have to accept that.

Now, sometimes there are legitimate reasons why something didn’t happen and you didn’t succeed, but is it to defer blame or is it to just try to figure out what we’re going to do better next time?

So we have a whole book on this and a whole series on this.

@3:54 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Senior Master, did you want to add anything on excuses? When you talk about excuses like that, it’s… sounds like you’re always, and excuse is a way you can blame someone else.

So not just not taking the responsibility yourself, but you’re pushing that responsibility onto somebody else that may not have any real bearing on what the situation is.

@4:18 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Yeah, somebody or something else, the traffic or the economy or whatever. And you know how you know when people are making excuses?

@4:33 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

No, so how do we know when people are making excuses?

@4:35 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

It’s kind of a joke, but kind of not. It’s when people say, I’m not making an excuse, but exactly what comes out is a reason why they didn’t do what they were wanting to do, what they were promising to do, what they accomplished.

It’s okay not to accomplish everything. It’s just whether or not making an excuse matters. So we have a whole other seminar on that, another book on it.

But it’s important because justification is a little bit different. Justification. So is reasons you give yourself or others to validate a decision or action.

So what this could look like is, you know, sometimes we’ll have a student going, oh, well, I it’s really, you know, I couldn’t make it to class.

My schedule is busy and they’re they’re coming up with a bunch of reasons why they’re going to maybe quit, you know, working on their martial arts, working on their black belt.

And a lot of times that’s because they got to the point where it was difficult. So it’s difficult. And then I think this is a good example.

There’s some discomfort. And then you can make a list of reasons why you don’t want to do something. And that could be a lot of things or go the other way.

I just got a new car. So I came up with lots and lots of reasons why it was a really good idea to get my new car.

And most of the time, it’s never a good idea to get a new car unless your first car is totally broken.

And it’s so I did that because I wanted to. But in my mind, I had to think of justifications why.

right. So we’re to talk about justifications and why they can be harmful for us. Other examples, let me give you the reason.

The purpose of this reason is to feel better about a decision or action, to do something or not do something.

It’s to feel better about it. And there’s nothing wrong with feeling better about things. What can be problematic is if it clouds the decision or it keeps us from doing action.

@6:39 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Anything to add there, ma’am? Part of it, to me, when I was thinking about justifications, is sometimes there’s a lack of integrity within the justification that you’re looking so hard to find a reason even to yourself.

@6:57 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

of it. Mm-hmm.

@6:59 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

That- If you have to work that hard to convince yourself that it was okay for something to not happen, or okay that you did something, then there might just be a bit of an integrity issue there on, yeah, you knew you shouldn’t have done that, and now you’re just making it happen.

@7:20 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Yeah, so an excuse would be, I did it because it was their fault, or somebody else’s fault, or some other reason.

Justification is, I’m giving you a reason to validate it, or make it okay. It’s okay I didn’t, you know, remember your birthday.

It’s okay I didn’t, whatever. Sometimes we forget things, it’s okay, but this is why I have all these reasons.

Well, that’s an excuse. The forget the birthday is an excuse thing, because I didn’t do what I was promising somebody else to do.

But if I was trying to make a decision, we see this in our business work that we do, somebody trying to decide if they wanted to raise their prices.

Well, the real data would be whether or not raising the price. The price would be okay and people would pay, but the contrast of the data is people come up with all these reasons why they’re doing other analysis and they’re coming up with data and data and data, and I think ChatGPT makes it even worse.

You can continue to come up with data and recycle data and data and data. If it’s just to rationalize a decision, that’s when it’s justification.

So let’s talk about another piece of this is, when is it justification? Kind of what I’ve just talked about is, and when is just thinking about something?

When is it thinking about it or gathering data? So gathering data, you know you’re gathering data and using additional information if it starts with curiosity or how I’m going to improve.

So curiosity, I’m wondering what all the information is about my decision that I’m going to make or the action I’m going to take.

What’s the information that would be helpful? And it’s, the idea there, you know you’re in thinking about it or gathering data mode if you’re looking for feedback.

So if I ask you, a lot of times we talk about our new ideas, and I ask you about, well, what do you think about it?

If I really want to know the answer, then it’s gathering data. If I ask you what you think about it, I’m really hoping you tell me it’s a good idea, then that’s a justification.

You want to add some more on to that?

@9:14 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Justification a lot of times is you want to be right.

@9:19 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

You have the need to be right.

@9:21 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

That’s why you can justify it. And it’s not, you know, I thought of this, how can I make it right to everybody, including myself?

@9:34 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Right, right. And we see this a lot with some people that are just in maybe a power position or sometimes people with narcissistic personality disorder.

People over talk about narcissism in the world today, but somebody who just needs to be right, it’s super important for them to be correct.

And then it’s easy to come up with more reasons why you’re correct. It’s just, you know, you can invent all kinds of reasons.

It doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It just means that. If the purpose of those is to be right, instead of the purpose of it is to get actual feedback and be curious about what I’m going to do next.

So justification, the difference would be for protection or validation. I want to validate the decision I already want to make.

I have to admit, the car one was a lot of justification.

@10:19 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

If I had asked you, hey, what do you think?

@10:21 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

What was the good idea? And I actually did call some of my friends that are cheap. And I thought, well, if they tell me no, it’s going to be okay.

@10:28 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

But they didn’t tell me no. So I did it.

@10:31 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

And it was kind of a ridiculous process, but it was to protect or validate a decision. And really, it’s to reinforce decisions about actions or decisions that we’ve already made.

And we’ll talk about confirmation bias and negativity bias. And that determines how you can do this justification thing. So when would we justify?

So when is it justification? And when is it just us being like… we’re that we’re that we’re we’re we’re saying

I’m very curious in making a decision. And the reason that we start justifying is when we’re on the edge of growth, something’s difficult.

Like we mentioned somebody quitting something. Or I’ve got a good reason why I want to eat that ice cream.

Well, the growth would be I want to, you know, get in better shape and lose weight. I’m going to make a decision about that.

Well, the ice cream one is to stay in comfort. Sorry, let me use a different example on the decision on the edge of growth.

Well, I could go work out, you know, I could work out, I could exercise, but I’ve got this reason to do something else, this reason to do something else.

I’m really busy, really busy. We hear that all the time. And people kind of say, well, if you just knew how busy I am, then you’d never ask me to do anything.

If you just knew how busy I am, then you’d understand why I failed at these things. And, and if that was true, everybody in the world would be busier than everybody else in the world.

And it’s very, it’s very, very common justification. I’m busy, but that does that. We use those justifications when they’re on the edge of discomfort or on the edge of growth.

And we know that we’re justifying when they’re objectively not in our best interest. Now, the other reason we might justify, I didn’t put it here, was when we have a strong desire.

That was my car one. We really want that ice cream. So we’re going to justify, well, I was really good today.

I didn’t eat other stuff. Or I was really good. I exercised last week, so it’s okay to eat the ice cream.

Um, that’s a justification rather than curiosity. Anything to add there, ma’am?

@12:36 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Um, justification can lead to illness. Um, you know, you’re trying so hard to come up with your justifications for yourself that it adds so much stress.

That’s where stomach aches and headaches and things come from that the justification for something when you’re, it’s good for you and I’m going to do it and justify.

Yeah, it’s pretty easy. To talk yourself into something that’s good for you. But if you know you’re in the wrong and you’re justifying it, that’s going to lead to just other issues down the road and you know it.

@13:12 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Yeah. And you’re talking about something in terms of justification, which can happen, which is looping. I can loop and ruminate on an idea coming up with more reasons and more reasons, more reasons for doing it, more reasons against doing it, more reasons for doing it, more reasons against doing it.

And this is when we talk about freedom, having the courage to stop all that, make a decision and accept it, and then you have freedom from that type of mental anguish about decisions.

@13:40 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Yes. And we both know a lot of people that do this.

@13:44 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

So what’s it look like? So it’s an illusion of logic. I’m going to come up with lots and lots of reasons why I’m going to do something or why I’m not going to do something or why I’m going to take this action or why I’m going to take this action.

Or even it could be about the past. I’m going to come up with lots of reasons why I. I did that past action.

So it’s an illusion of logic. So we can be comfortable and kind of get out of our discomfort and or chase desire.

The illusion of logic. I really want that. I really want that ice cream. So I’m going to make a bunch of reasons, create a bunch of reasons why it’s okay to do it.

So the trap can be we have discomfort or desire, either a positive or negative thing. We want to validate it then.

And so some decision needs to be made and we use justification and it can continue. Give us some emotional comfort or we keep repeating the justification because some things you can’t make.

Some things are not right or wrong. Pro and con. Benjamin Franklin in his writings talked about doing a pro and con list.

What I’ve learned is that if I really, really want something, my pro list looks really good.

@14:54 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

If I really, really don’t want something, my con list looks really good.

@15:00 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

And so it traps us. It keeps us from having the courage to take action. So taking action would be the opposite of taking action, if I’m justifying, would be I’m uncomfortable with the idea of whatever I’m going to do or I’m worried about it.

I’m going to have a big con list then. That’s called negativity bias. So negativity bias is our tendency to pay attention to things that might cause us harm.

And it’s very natural. It’s natural for us to be more worried about things that might kill us than worried about something that might be a beautiful sunset or beautiful day.

So something equally positive and equally negative, our brains make us pay attention to the negative more. So we’re really good at that.

My example, that’s usually if a tiger’s running after us, we really, and we’re at a beautiful, you see a beautiful mountain scene, you’re not even going to pay attention to the beautiful mountain scene.

You’re going to pay attention to the tiger running after you. Anything to add on there, ma’am?

@15:57 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

No, it’s just it, you, you’re going to. Talk yourself into something one way or another when you’re working with justifications.

And like you said, if you don’t want it, your negative list is going to be bigger. If you want it, you’re going to find reasons that you should have it or that it’s not going to do you any harm, even if it’s ice cream, and you know that it’s going to raise your blood sugar all out of proportion to what it should be.

You’re going to eat the ice cream anyway, and you’re going to say it’s because I’m on my off day and I don’t have to worry about it today.

Or I’ll make this my off day, even though it’s supposed to be tomorrow. Exactly.

@16:40 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Or be better tomorrow. And so the resisting desire one, it keeps us from resisting a desire that we have that may not be in our best interest.

That’s confirmation bias. So we hear about confirmation bias a lot, which means that we’re biased to reinforce things that we believe.

If you believe that… that… that… If aliens are affecting your aliens are affecting us in the world, you’re going to pay a lot of attention to alien reports.

By the way, I met somebody who’s who’s that way recently. It’s a different story that you’ll you’ll enjoy Master Sanborn.

But but yeah, if you believe in it, if you believe aliens, you’re going to you’re going to think that there’s a lot of you’re going to pay attention to that news.

And you’re not going to pay attention to the news that says that’s not really a thing. Again, maybe it is if you believe it, that’s that’s fine with me.

But we have confirmation bias about a lot of things. When we you and I are been in the ATA and martial arts for a million years, if we see a car that has an ATA sticker on you notice it, you didn’t notice the cars that had, you know, plumbing stickers or some other stickers or whatever, unless you’re in the mood to get a plumber, you’re noticing things that you that are confirming information you believe in or that you’re interested.

So that’s confirmation bias. And it allows us to resist desire, or it allows us to do confirmation biases when we do the thing that may be not in our best interest.

If we don’t justify and don’t use confirmation bias, that allows us to resist desire. Hopefully, I made sense there with the two things here.

@18:18 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Yeah, I had heard it with politics based with Richard Nixon, as how could people even after he was found guilty, and there was no doubt that he did it.

How could people still follow him and it had to do with the confirmation bias, they had convinced themselves so far back, that they were right to believe in him, that they couldn’t change even with actual evidence.

@18:45 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

In front of him. Yeah, I’m using justification. Well, here’s another reason. Here’s another reason. Oh, that’s, that’s fake news, or that’s, it wasn’t a term back then, but that’s fake news, or that’s not, he probably didn’t do it.

Oh, but he’s a good guy. Oh, but this and this and this and that. So you’re using justification.

@19:00 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Yes.

@19:02 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

So what we want, what we get from this, if we don’t use justification, it gives us freedom. Freedom from negativity bias and confirmation bias.

And it’s difficult. I mean, I wanted my car. Sometimes you want ice cream. Sometimes you want stuff. It’s difficult.

But the idea here is to get the idea of what it is and what it isn’t. So what we want to be able to do is accept decisions rather than justify.

If you want the ice cream, go ahead and eat the ice cream. You just don’t need to make up a bunch of reasons why it’s okay or not.

That’ll help you be free to then decide what you’re going to do next because of that. And it helps you from getting trapped in the loop.

If you’re finding yourself looping in decisions, that’s almost always justification. It’s a decision that maybe can’t be made. You, you want to do it, but you are worried about doing it.

You would like this, but you don’t necessarily want to spend the money you do. And if you’re looping, all those things are just.

you. And you can get free of all that by making a decision and accepting that that decision is what you’re going to do and accepting that there’s no right and wrong decision if you’re in that state.

And it allows you to make difficult decisions. Almost all decisions that are going to help you grow are difficult.

Things that are challenging are what are going to help you grow. And we talk about this in martial arts that people, you know, maybe get challenged.

Their problem is when something becomes difficult. And our job is to make it difficult for you. Our job is to make it challenging so that it’s hard and that you get through it and then you learn.

And it’s harder and you get through and you learn. And that’s when we end up using justification to maybe push back on that.

So it allows you to make difficult decisions that are going to be in your best interest. Anything you add to that, ma’am?

@20:55 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

No, not on that one.

@20:57 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Okay, so I’m surprising you with that. So we’re going to talk about, the slide got messed up here a little bit.

The problem was should, the word should. And I think this happens a lot with justification. I should do this.

I should do that. I should eat better. should work better. And that word should, I want to encourage everybody, one step of this, of getting rid of justifications is getting rid of that word.

What should is almost always a guilt statement. It puts pressure on people and it’s a judgmental statement. It’s judgmental about somebody else or about ourself.

When you say, you should do this or you should do that, you should get up early or should eat better.

You should have known better. I hear that a lot in my therapy work. Well, he should have known that whatever.

It totally changes if you were, at the bottom here it says, if you use the word could. He could have known ABC.

I could work out. I could work out. Then you can make a decision of whether you’re going to do it or not.

That’s not a shame statement. So. Alternatives, know, I want to do something because if I say you should eat better, okay, you know, next time I’ll eat better, or I’m going to eat, you know, I’m making the decision to enjoy myself at this moment because I’m on vacation.

Should is a really dangerous word to use. Anything to add there, ma’am, or examples you’ve seen?

@22:22 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Yeah, I was just applying that actually to myself in my head that shaming yourself because you don’t, you should do something, and you know, you’ve been told what you should, everybody uses that word.

Mm-hmm. But how changing it would be to say, oh, I could do that, or I could do this, without either one being the requirement.

Yeah, and you could do that with your, you know, your spouse or other people.

@22:55 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

If there’s one thing we can learn from this today, it’s to replace the word should with… It can change your life and how you approach things and how you interact with other people because then it allows choice and it allows autonomy instead of shame.

Shame is a really dangerous thing. Shame and guilt are very different. Guilt is, I did something bad, so I have a feeling about maybe I should do it differently next time.

That’s a useful feeling. Shame is, I am bad. If somebody says to you, you should work out, I’m bad.

You know, I’m kind of a loser because I didn’t work out. That’s what that statement would mean. So that’s a big difference there.

So what’s the fix of this? And I kind of spoiled it by showing everything here. So fix number one is paying attention.

Am I building a case? Am I justifying or am I being curious when I come up with data and reasons and things?

Is it curiosity? Or is it building a case? Now, The tricky part of this is if I asked you that in the middle of you making a bunch of justifications, you might say, oh, no, I’m just being curious.

That’s a justification about the justifications. So try to be self-aware of whether it’s a justification or you’re being curious or gathering information to help you.

The second is really look at what part of this is my emotions. When I got the new car, it was I really wanted it.

I mean, in real life, it was because I really wanted it. I came up with some reasons why it was sort of logical, but there’s no real good logic to that.

The best thing would be to buy the cheapest possible used car that would function, and that would save the most money and be the most logical.

But I had an emotional attachment to it, and I enjoy it. So there’s nothing wrong with making a decision because you’ll enjoy it or because you think it’s going to help you or you have a good feeling about it.

That’s okay, but let’s at least. Be realistic about and not be deluded by which is emotion and which is logic.

And the last part then is understand and accept the difference. It’s okay to make a decision based on emotion, but accept it rather than justify it.

Ma’am, anything to add there?

@25:18 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

No, just, a lot of times when you’re building a case, it seems like it’s more of excuses because you’re trying to, you’re going to explain it to somebody else.

Not even just yourself, but if you’re going to explain it to somebody else, a lot of that times it feels like it’s going to just fall into excuses rather than a justification.

Oh, I was going to do that. I have every intention of doing it and I decided against doing it because I have a headache, but I really know that if it was more important to me, the headache wouldn’t matter.

@25:54 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

Yeah, yeah. That’s a good example. There, there’s a good example where somebody might say to you and you, and you feel.

The other person, you’ve got to accept that. Oh, I got up late because I had a headache. Right. But they got up on time for their job.

They still had a headache, but they got up on, you know, they were there on time for other things.

We know some, you know, we’ve talked about some examples of that where somebody’s on time for their meeting, but they’re late for you.

And then they give you excuses to validate that. So excuses and justifications are very similar. And there’s some gray area.

think they probably could be called one thing or the other. You know, it’s, it, it, you just got to decide which one is which and ideally not use either of them.

We can be stronger and we can feel better about ourselves if we don’t use them rather than use an external justification or excuse about something.

If we just kind of eliminate those as much as possible, and then we can have better relationships with people and better relationship with ourselves.

@26:55 – Sr. Master Laura Sanborn

Yes.

@26:56 – Chief Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

So this is the idea that we’re talking, that we started with this and we’ll end with this. with this.

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. So having the courage not to use justifications or excuses in our other talk turns into freedom.

It turns into freedom. can make decisions. If we don’t use the word should, we use the word could. We’re allowing other people that we say that to to have freedom, and we’re allowing it to ourselves.

Instead of beating us up and shaming us, we’re allowing us to make decisions. And then if we have freedom, that’s when we’re going to be happier about what we’re doing and how we’re approaching the world.

Okay, that’s our that’s our time for today. Thanks a lot, Senior Master. I really appreciate everything as always. And I look forward to the next time that we get together.

Yes, sir.

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