69| Stop Justifying Your Actions and Start Living With More Peace

Have you ever caught yourself justifying your actions with "After everything I've been through, don't I deserve a pass?" "They started it, so why should I be the one who acts better?" "If people knew what I'd been through, they'd understand why I am the way I am." If any of this hit close to home, this episode is for you. 

Transcript

Have you ever caught yourself justifying your actions with "After everything I've been through, don't I deserve a pass?" "They started it, so why should I be the one who acts better?" "If people knew what I'd been through, they'd understand why I am the way I am." If any of this hit close to home, this episode is for you. This podcast is always 20 minutes or less so you don’t have to feel overwhelmed or overhaul everything in your life, but just make small, simple changes to create more calm and peace. To get to your better life, make small changes and begin to live it!

Hey, welcome back friends, and if you're new here, then just welcome. I'm really glad you found your way to this conversation today because we're going to talk about something that jumps off of last week’s episode and could be a little uncomfortable but as we’ve established here, comfort is not where your growth happens. You have to roll around in a little discomfort...it’s internal fertilizer to help you grow my friends. So last week on episode 68 we talked about blame, about how we point outward at other people and circumstances or collapse inward with harsh self-criticism, and how neither of those things actually moves us forward or helps us heal. Today we're going one layer deeper because blame has a very close cousin that's even sneakier and in some ways even more damaging. And that cousin is justification.

Now justification is interesting because unlike blame, which most of us can at least recognize in ourselves on a good day, justification tends to feel completely reasonable because, well, we feel justified by it. It feels like context. It feels like explanation. It feels like the truth or at least a version of the truth. And that's exactly what makes it so tricky to see and so hard to let go of. It gives us a reason for how we are and lets us off the hook of not having to do that hard work on ourselves and we can just let things be, because, well, we’re justified. 

So let’s get into what it is. Justification is what happens when we use our past, our pain, our story, to explain away behavior that we know, somewhere deep down, isn't okay. It's the internal argument we make to ourselves about why the rules that apply to everyone else don't quite apply to us. Why we get a pass, why we deserve one. Why what we did or said or chose was actually understandable given everything we've been through. And you know what, sometimes it is understandable. But understandable and okay are not the same thing. Just because it’s understandable doesn’t mean it’s right. And that distinction is where everything lives.

Take a moment right now and just let yourself think about something you've justified recently. Maybe it was the way you spoke to someone when you were stressed. Maybe it was a decision you made that you knew wasn't quite right but you had your reasons. Maybe it was something bigger, a pattern you've been carrying for years that has a very long and well-rehearsed explanation attached to it, a decades long explanation sometimes. Sit with that justification and return to it as we get into this podcast. Now I want to start with childhood because that's where so much of this begins and I want to be really careful here because I don't want to minimize what anyone has been through. Childhood trauma is real. The wounds we carry from the way we were raised, the things that happened to us, the things that should have happened but didn't, the things that never should have happened, those are real and they matter whether it’s big trauma or little trauma or anywhere in between. The research on adverse childhood experiences, what researchers call ACEs, is absolutely clear that early trauma shapes the nervous system, the attachment patterns, the belief systems we carry into adulthood in profound and lasting ways. So I'm not here to tell you that your past doesn't matter or that what happened to you wasn't significant. It was. You are allowed to acknowledge that fully and just because someone else didn’t experience trauma with a similar event, or they did and you didn’t, remember everyone comes to events from their own experiences and how they see and feel things.

But here's where I want to gently push on something. There is a difference between explaining your behavior because of trauma and excusing it. There is a difference between understanding where a pattern came from and further deciding that where it came from means you don't have to do anything about it. And there is a difference between being shaped by your past and being permanently defined by it. Because the moment your story becomes the reason you get to treat people badly, whether that's a stranger, a partner, a friend, or your own children, something has shifted from healing to harm. And if we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the difference even when we don't want to admit it. But ask yourself honestly, is that explanation helping you change the pattern or is it helping you keep it?

Now sometimes justification comes from revenge and this one is really difficult to address because sometimes it’s really subtle. It can be the way we treat someone who we feel has wronged us without even realizing it. It's the satisfaction of making things difficult for someone who made things difficult for us. It's deciding that because someone hurt us, we're entitled to a certain kind of response, a certain level of coldness or sharpness or withdrawal that we'd normally consider unkind for anyone else or if someone did it to us. But we do it because they had it coming. Because they started it. Because they should have thought about that before they did what they did.

And here's the ego again, doing exactly what it does really well, building a case and collecting evidence. Deciding that fairness has been violated and that therefore certain rules of decent behavior can be temporarily suspended. Because when things are unfair, aren’t we allowed to respond based on what was done to us? The ego is absolutely convinced of this and it will make a very compelling argument. The problem is that every time we act from that place, every time we let the desire for revenge or retaliation, however small, drive our behavior, we're not actually restoring fairness. We're just adding more of the same thing to the pile. And we're the ones who have to live with all that negative emotion, we’re carrying it and we have to now live with who we become in the process.

There's a Buddhist saying that says that holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. And it’s not just about the big things, the dramatic betrayals and the major grievances, because honestly we apply it just as much to the small daily choices to be a little unkind, a little cold, a little less than our best selves, because we've decided someone has it coming and damnit, we’re owed something. Now I want to spend some real time on this idea of feeling owed because I think it's one of the most common and least talked about justifications that keeps people stuck. The feeling of being owed something, whether by a specific person, by a family, by a system, or just by life itself, is incredibly human. Especially when you've genuinely been through something hard. When you've struggled and suffered and worked and still not gotten what you feel you deserved, the feeling that life owes you something makes complete emotional sense. Of course it does. But feelings that make sense and beliefs that serve us are not always the same thing.

Because when we operate from the belief that we're owed, a few things happen that aren't helpful to us. First, we stop taking full responsibility for creating what we want because we're waiting for it to be given to us or given back to us. Second, we start treating the people around us through the lens of that debt, deciding who owes us what and feeling resentful when they don't deliver. And third, we start justifying all kinds of behavior toward others because in our internal accounting system, we're still waiting for our payout. We've suffered enough that we've earned the right to be difficult, demanding, unkind, or checked out. And that is a very quiet but very painful and very lonely way to move through the world.

Studies have shown that people who hold a strong sense of entitlement, meaning the belief that they deserve more than others or that the world owes them, consistently report lower levels of gratitude, higher levels of frustration, and significantly more conflict in their relationships. Not because they're bad people but because the entitlement lens distorts everything. It makes ordinary interactions feel like transactions and ordinary disappointments feel like betrayals. Love and care, being kind must never be transactional. The whole point of kindness is to do for others without expecting anything in return so when you feel that you are owed, you are entitled, true love and kindness cannot live in that same space. Think about that for a moment. If you've been moving through your life with even a low-level hum of feeling owed, what has that been costing you? In your relationships, in your sense of peace, in your ability to actually receive what's good when it shows up?

Now let's talk about how we treat strangers because this one reveals a lot about where we actually are internally. How we treat people who can do nothing for us, people we'll never see again, people who have no power over our lives, that's one of the truest mirrors of our inner state. The driver who cuts you off and gets the full force of your frustration. The cashier who becomes the target of a bad day that has nothing to do with them. The person who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when your patience ran out. We justify this all the time. I was stressed. I've had a terrible week. They should have known better. Anyone would have reacted that way. But here's what I want you to consider. The way we treat people who can't affect our lives tells us exactly what our default setting actually is. Not the version of ourselves we perform for the people whose opinion matters to us, but the actual baseline of our emotional state. And if the baseline has been shaped by unprocessed pain, by a running tally of what we're owed, by the habit of justifying unkindness because of everything we've been through, then that baseline needs your review. A true look at yourself honestly, not with shame, not trying to figure it out just yet, but just with honesty.

Because the research on what psychologists call moral disengagement, which is essentially the process by which we justify treating others in ways that contradict our own values, shows us something really important. A study by the psychologist Albert Bandura, found that people are really good at temporarily switching off their own ethical standards when they have an important enough reason. We tell ourselves the situation was different and we had to. We tell ourselves the other person deserved it. We tell ourselves anyone would have done the same. And in doing so we protect our self-image while still engaging in behavior that doesn't align with who we actually want to be. So here's the question that really sits underneath all of this. Who do you want to be? Not who were you shaped to be by what you went through. Not who do you have a good reason to be given everything that's happened. Because that just says you have no power over yourself, you are who you are because of what you went thru. But you do have power, so who do you actually want to be when you strip away the justifications and the stories and the accounting of what you're owed? Because that person is still in there. And every time you choose to act from that person instead of from the wound, you're doing something powerful and authentic. You take back your power over your life by refusing to let what happened to you have the final word on who you become.

So think about a recent interaction where you weren't quite your best self and you felt you had a reason for it. Now imagine watching that interaction from the outside, just someone observing what you said, how you reacted not knowing any of your context or backstory or reasons. What would you see? And is that the person you want to be? And on the flip side, if someone is justifying their actions to you whether they say it or not, but if they are not treating you fairly or kindly, remember that their actions have less to do with you and more to do with their own experiences and their own pain. It doesn’t mean you get to keep accepting the behavior but you don’t have to keep taking it personally. You don’t have to pick up their baggage. Leave it where it is, walk over it and say thank you but no thank you. And if you need to hold a boundary and create some space for your own peace, then you are in fact justified to do so.

Now let's get into what we can actually do to make some small shifts, some small change to help us reflect and grow in this. The first shift I want to offer is learning to separate explanation from permission. Your past explains a lot about you. It shaped you in real and significant ways and understanding that is genuinely important work, it’s great self awareness. But explanation isn't the same as permission. Knowing why you do something doesn't mean you get to keep doing it, doesn’t mean you don't have to do the work of changing it. In fact, understanding the why is just the beginning. It's the map for change but you still have to walk towards it.

The second shift is to start noticing the justification story in real time as it happens. Because most of the time it happens so fast we don't even catch it. We just act and the story fills in behind us to explain why that was okay. What if you tried pausing, even briefly, before you respond in a situation where you feel provoked or wronged or entitled to a certain kind of reaction? Not to suppress what you feel but just to create a small pause between the feeling and the action. That pause is where choice lives and choice is where your power is.

The third shift is one of the most important and one of the hardest. It's the practice of grieving what you didn't get without making other people pay for it. Because so much of the justification we carry, the feeling of being owed, the permission we give ourselves to be unkind, it comes from grief that was never fully felt. Grief for the childhood that should have been different. For the love that should have been there. For the fairness that should have existed. That grief is real and it deserves to be honored. But it deserves to be honored in ways that don't cost other people. In therapy, in honest conversations, in your own quiet processing. Not in the daily interactions of your life where people who had nothing to do with your pain end up on the other side of your pain and absorbing it.

And here's the thing about doing that work. About actually grieving what happened instead of justifying what comes out of it. On the other side of it the feeling of being lighter, of putting down all that we are carrying. A kind of freedom that comes from not having to carry the story anymore. Not because the past didn't happen but because you've stopped letting it take control, you no longer allow it to drive. And that freedom, that lightness, is available to you as you make these small shifts and small changes. Not overnight and not without effort but it's there.

So this week, just once, catch yourself mid-justification. It doesn't have to be a big moment. It could be something small. And just ask yourself, is this who I want to be right now? Not who I have a reason to be. Not who my past made me. Just who I want to be in this moment, in this interaction, with this person. Do I want to be this angry, unkind person with a story, or do I want to change my story and be the more caring and kind person to them and to myself? And see what happens when you let that question be the one that guides you.

And if today's conversation stirred something up for you, think about someone else who maybe holding on and carrying that justification baggage and maybe you can help encourage them to put some down. Because sometimes we all need someone to hold up a mirror with kindness and say hey, there might be something worth looking at here.

So as we close today, I want to thank you for being here and thank yourself for taking a few minutes for you, for your self care, for your own growth. Taking a hard look at our own actions and calling them out and doing the work is hard but it’s the most rewarding work we can do as humans. It’s what will help build a better life, help you interact better with yourself and those around you to create more peace, little by little and peace by peace.