“Why did this happen?”
Our first instinct is to give an explanation.
The more serious the situation, the more likely we are to come up with an “alibi” as Napoleon Hill likes to call it.
These days we call it an excuse.
It’s our survival instinct.
We feel threatened.
We try to run away.
Physically if possible, verbally if not.
It’s also our social instinct.
We want to belong to a group.
It increases our chances of survival.
The moment we find ourselves threatened, we’re afraid of being thrown out of the group.
So we try to mitigate the damage by coming up with an explanation. An excuse.
If we’re good at it, it’ll calm down the person or people we’re dealing with.
If we’re bad at it, we’ve just made the situation worse.
Regardless of its effect, we’ve just wasted a bunch of people’s time.
The time spent coming up with an excuse could have been spent on:
- A solution to overcome or reverse the situation
- A subsequent action you can take
- An improvement to yourself as a result of the above action and learning
So, the next time you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself: what is the best use of our time?