Preparing Your Defense
Outside of being a defendant in a court case or a politician entering a debate, how much time do you spend preparing your defense?
The more time you spend on prepping a defense translates into less time working on what you’re defending yourself against.
What are you preparing your defense against? My guess is it’s the way you handled something that didn’t turn out as well as you would have liked.
You are likely to offer the “if you were in my shoes, you would have done what I’ve done” defense.
My suggestion is to take responsibility for your actions and find a way to move forward to a better outcome.
“It didn’t work out the way I had initially envisioned and here’s my plan to get the desired outcome.” If you make that sort of statement, you can now debate the merits of the plan instead of defending actions that divert attention from taking action.
Listen to your internal conversations as an observer rather than as a participant, and notice how much time you spend defending yourself. You sound like a character from a Law & Order episode.
We are more defending our self-image than we are our actions. We are attempting to defend against what others think of us. Here’s a secret: They are going to think what they think no matter what our defense.
When you catch yourself defending yourself inside your head, just stop the spin and, instead, look for a way to win.
Up until now, you may not have been aware how much time you spend defending yourself, but now that you know, you have an opportunity to choose between “Stop” and “Go.”
You stop action on a solution when you’re in defense mode, and solutions begin to flow when you let your defense go.
All the best,
John
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