Making excuses can be a real problem. Psychologist Dr. C.R. Snyder' studies has helped many people deal with their deeply imbedded excuse-making techniques.
It's a common occurrence for most people to occasionally make resolutions or set goals that will help to improve their present or future lifestyle.
New Year's Eve, heading into a "brand new" year, is the classic time for many to make resolutions. Often these consist of a promise to stop existing bad habits or of avoiding new ones. No matter what the time of year, setting new goals for improvement in different areas of our lives, rather than promising simply to stop doing unproductive things, would seem to have a better chance of attainment.
Facts point out, however, that only a few short weeks or perhaps even days after making resolutions or promises, many of us have already come up with a multitude of excuses as to why we can't live up to them. Because of this latter fact, let's take a good look at the act of making excuses in general. It seems to be a widespread less-than-acceptable behavioral flaw that affects children and grown ups alike.
What we have here isn't simple procrastination. Excuses come in the form of out and out rationalization or denial of responsibility. Those special projects we were going to work on would be done, if only we weren't so tired after a day's work at the factory. This same tiredness doesn't seem to affect other areas of our life such as Sunday night bowling.
Let's take bowling for another example. Why is it that we have a bad shoulder or knee which only bothers us on nights when we haven't bowled so well?
Research into the world of excuse making, can be very enlightning. It seems there are many different strategies involved in this explanation of, or preparation for, failure.
According to Dr. C.R. Snyder, clinical psychologist at the University of Kansas, men and women make an equal number of excuses, but women use a verbally more sophisticated strategy, as opposed to men's macho bold-faced denial, or self-handicapping alibis for poor performance.
Starting back in early childhood, parents who love their children very much, can still expect a great deal from them, and set standards accordingly. Years later, these same children often catch themselves making "excuses" for not living up to those standards. Dr. Snyder points out that self-concept develops in the early school years when children begin learning to compare their idealized version of themselves with reality. Seven-year-olds start worrying about what others think of them and by the age of nine kids start dealing with the concept of self-criticism.
Excuse making becomes a way of protecting young egos. Children sometimes feel that criticism is tantamount to epic rejection. After reading Dr. Snyder's theories, many of us can probably identify with techniques we use in our own excuse making process.
Plain and simple "denial of responsibility" is one of the most common. For example, that scratch on the car was probably made when the wife had the car last, not when I "barely brushed" that car in the parking lot at work.
Or how about the "it really wasn't that bad" ploy. The diet wasn't really broken, as the peice of cake was small and there wasn't much ice cream in the bowl.
Research shows that the most popular excuse making technique is the "extenuating circumstances" one. If some fan hadn't hollered too loud, that flyball wouldn't have been dropped out in center field. Of course, there is some half-truth to this technique, which makes the biased account more favourable to the excuse maker.
Dr. Snyder's points out that there are ways to end or at least reduce excuse making. First of all, we can lower any unrealistically high standards we may have set for ourselves. We probably have spent an awful lot of time trying to explain (make excuses for) why we are not perfect at various things. We can try writing a few small articles before jumping head-on into an epic novel. Or we can learn to be happy with a few good bowling scores, instead of always shooting for that "perfect game."
By taking things slowly and systematically anyone can get their excuse making under control. Dr. Snyder assures us of this.
The great William Shakespeare gave us the real reason to try and put a halt to excuses when he said "And ofentimes excusing of a fault/Doth make the fault worse by the excuse."
