Reasons Aren’t Relevant
Perhaps you have noticed that we create reasons for everything. There is rarely an absence of reasons, and when there is, we use this catch all piece of nonsense:”Things happen for a reason.”
NO THEY DON’T! Never have – Never will.
Apply a bit of logic and you’ll see that piece of reasoning is born out of fairy dust.
The way our brain is wired has us experience an event first and then reason about it second. Reasons don’t cause reality, they interpret it.
The phrase most used under this reasoning umbrella is, “It was God’s will.” What a hubristic statement that is. That means we are assigning a human trait to our version of the almighty. We are giving God reasoning power. We are attempting to make God into our image and likeness, rather than the other way around.
We act first and reason second. If it happened the other way around, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post.
Creating reasons is magical thinking gone amok.
Let’s pretend you are the finalist for a job you really want and you turn out to be the second choice. After you get the unwelcome news, you begin to spin out reasons. “They hired the other person because (fill in your reasons here).” Notice that you can list reasons all day long and still have some left over.
Would you like an answer that gets you out of the reasoning mode and focused on the reality at hand? In the job scenario listed above, one of the answers that accomplishes this goal is: “I didn’t get the job.”
Please notice the period at the end of that sentence.
Let the period be your reminder to STOP!
The minute you begin the next sentence, you go into the never ending land of reasoning, and with each step, you move farther away from reality.
Start training yourself to answer “Why?” questions with a verifiable fact.
We look for reasons to validate or mitigate our feelings about an occurrence. Notice that each one of those reasons moves you away from dealing with the reality at hand.
Any sentence that begins with these words, “The reason I . . . ” is a clue that you’re about to get something smelly on your shoe. You’re about to step into dog shit.
I will readily admit that reasoning can be fun. It’s a great exercise to use our imagination in a diversionary way. Try it out. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” To get away from Colonel Sanders comes to mind.
Learn this lesson: Things happen and then we reason about them. The sooner that happens, the sooner you’ll deal with reality rather than reason about the hand you were dealt.
It’s not an easy lesson to learn but a necessary one, especially if you want to function better in the world as it is, rather than pretend you live in one that isn’t.
All the best,
John
Be Sociable, Share!