No more talk!
The psychologist ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser advises the executives of large companies when they have to master crises. What she advises the managers can also help us in everyday life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Why did you choose the excuses as a specialty?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: I am married to the world's best excuse inventor. The occupation with the topic is so pure self-defense. No, seriously: For a long time now I would like to write a book about personality development. To offer you a classic excuse: Unfortunately, something always comes up in my mind. One morning, I woke up and knew that if I was to write it one day, that book would be titled? The End of Excuses? must have.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What has the development of our personality to do with excuses?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Excuses cause us to step on the spot instead of progressing, stopping in our development.
Rausreden helps us to push away unpleasant things
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: But something good must have excuses, otherwise we would not use them constantly.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: They help us to push away unpleasant things from us: I would have to quit my unbearable job actually. But then I would not have any more work. I would have to tell my colleague openly that I'm not satisfied with her. But then there would be bad mood in the department. Therefore, I leave everything as it is, and talk to me that I can not help it. My excuse, therefore, is that a necessary change in my life does not happen.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Do excuses really have so much power over us, are they downright dangerous?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: That depends. The little white lies, if you do not want to accept an invitation or have forgotten the birthday, they are harmless and often even smart. Things get dangerous when it comes to something fundamental in our lives: for example, if I live with the right partner, if my job suits me, which friends I have. We all have a clear idea of how we want these things in our lives.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: But the reality is often quite different ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: ... and then it starts with the excuses. Why we do not leave an unloved partner, do not seize a great opportunity at work, do not cultivate a well-established friendship or the like. For that we have reasons and explanations ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: ... that only partially agree.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: And yet we believe it because the alternative? So doing what we know to be the right thing for us? would be too exhausting for us.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: So excuses are pure comfort?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: In the vast majority of cases, they are. Of course, I'm not talking about things that really can not be changed? about a disease, the death of a loved one or the loss of a job because the company is broke ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: ... but about problems that we could solve. That makes us dissatisfied in the long run, why do not we do anything then?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: The cause lies, as so often, in our childhood. As children, we learn the excuses we use as adults. Who always gets to hear as a child: "Do not act like that!", Negative feelings and feelings will hardly be allowed to happen in later life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What's so bad about someone seeing things positively and behaving accordingly?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: First of all nothing, but if this person is not feeling well or someone in his or her environment needs help, he will have difficulty responding sensitively to it. Instead, he sticks to his old rules: "You have to be able to stand something?", Is action better than feeling? and so on. And already the excuse is found to displace a disease or a problem.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What kind of person is behind the sentence? I can not help myself, take me as I am?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Or also:? I'm just authentic.? This is a classic. For his moodiness, this man can not do anything that lies in the family. And if he wanted to change, he would have to bend. He can hide behind this excuse. The need to be active, the responsibility. In defense of the excuse he can claim: "I would do something if only I could, I'm not to blame, I'm the victim."
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: In the worst case, what can happen to me if I cling to my excuses for too long?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: That you will become as old as you never wanted to be.
Who actually asks the questions here? ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser and Till Raether were not always in agreement, but obviously enjoyed it
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: How do you know how I want to be in old age?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: We all have a vague imagination of ourselves as we want to be old. We want to become mature people, wise, confident, happy, popular grandmas or grandfathers, mentors or, quite simply, old people whom we like to listen to. Of course we will not be like Aunt Martha, who annoys us so incredibly, or like Grandpa Karl-Heinz, who we are sorry for with his cranky views. But that's exactly what comes to us when we stick to our excuses, so if we do not evolve.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: We become like the old people we do not like ourselves? Why that?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: This brings us back to personal development. Excuses slow us down. As children, we learn them, as adults we use them, and in old age we only defend them. In time we really would have something better to do.
Ewiges Rausreden brakes us out
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What, for example?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Everything we always put forward with the help of our excuses. The important, necessary changes we talked about earlier. And at some point the question: What is actually when I get older? If the stage is taken away from me?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What do you mean?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: At some point you retire, you're no longer a journalist, and then it's only moderately interesting what you once did for great interviews. Or that you once wrote this or that funny text.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: A horror scenario ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: It's pretty common, and it threatens us all. If we do not care about the development of our personality, we do not prepare ourselves in time for the stage to be taken away from us sometime. For this day X we have to have an alternative concept ready.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Please do not say now that we should have prepared to get older as early as possible.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: But no. Until about mid-30, it makes little sense to think about the development of our personality. Because until then, exactly what we believe in, what seems natural to us, makes us successful. However, those who continue to stick to the proven and trusted with more than 40 are on their way to stubbornness, which is attributed to old age.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: From the middle of life we should not rest on what we have achieved, but work on our personality development. What does that mean in concrete terms?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: The most important thing is to stay flexible for a lifetime. But we have to learn that first, because normally people become immobile over the years ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: ... but also more experienced.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Of course, and to a certain point that's great, I think a lot of experience, for example, at work. But as I said: At some point the stage, the playing field will be taken away from us. And if we then go by the motto? I've always done that? continue to play as before, this is certainly wrong.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: And how can we prevent that?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: To understand that, you need to go back to your childhood. You are four or five years old, you try to understand the world, and at some point you've made it: you've learned to behave in a way that allows you to snap the sun on your face, and that goes with it then good. So keep that in mind now. The problem is that as a child you also learned that the sun goes out in the face of others when you do certain things. And you do not know exactly why that is, but you learn that you prefer these things. So if you are spirited, for example ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: ... and I notice, in my family is rather calm and sitting still announced ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: ... then you learn that, but you also learn: Part of me is obviously rather difficult and not so desirable in this world, so I prefer to do it away. He becomes, so to say, your "shadow", you feel: This part of you is not lovable in the eyes of others and therefore not promising. Whenever you meet a person who touches that shadowy side in you, it irritates you profoundly. Because he is doing something that originally belonged to you, but what you have banned. The only bad thing is that by behaving in accordance with one's model of success, one never knows whether one is altogether okay with one's whole personality, or only if one behaves the way one has learned as a child.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Development is therefore also to try out this part of yourself, which is so far in the shade.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Yes. I always run away from what is not allowed to live in me. There is a really enlightening exercise to learn more about it. Imagine, the most unsympathetic person in the world would come into the room now. What kind of qualities would he have that make him particularly unsympathetic to you?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Hm. Right off the bat: loud and distant.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Okay, if you look at these features now, can you find something positive about them? Could one possibly formulate it positively?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: No.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Try it? S.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Maybe: direct and gripping.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: So, these are the positive interpretations of the properties that will spontaneously put you off most. You can assume that these very qualities, direct, gripping, are qualities where you have a deficit, where there is development opportunity for you.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Can not a human just be disagreeable with me, without it having anything to do with me?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: No. Nobody can force you to like or reject him, you'll do that yourself. He's disliking you.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Only me? There are terrible contemporaries.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Sure. But if you get really upset instead of merely observing and determining: I do not like it, I do not agree with that? so if you invest properly in heat then it always has to do with yourself.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: People who do not like me can help me to develop. How does that work?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: Instead of condemning what the other person does and what provokes us, we can understand it as a question for ourselves: could we live the positive of what annoys us, and would that be good for us? If someone annoys us, who seems to us arrogant? Would not more self-confidence be good for us? If a woman irritates us, who plays out her femininity? Why do not we allow ourselves that, and would not it be helpful to do it? Devaluing and upset prevents us from expanding our own repertoire of action.
Constant talk requires a lot of energy
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What does all this have to do with the end of the excuses?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: If you look honestly, who stops lying in his pocket, he needs no more excuses. He will do what is necessary to evolve. In the future, not to be on the spot anymore in life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: So easy?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: I'm not saying it's easy. But think about how much energy we spend to convince others and us with excuses of why we live differently than it is good for us. We could do a lot with this energy!
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Let's come back to you and your book about the end of the excuses. Why do not you start with that?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: I understand you want to hear my excuses. Please: no one needs this book, it's been said on most topics long ago, others can write much better than me.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: And how do you handle your own excuses now?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: I try to look at my excuses with humor. If I listen to myself while trying to find excuses, I have to laugh at some point, because all the excuses are so cliché and trite, so boring. And then, hopefully, I'll get to a point where I can say, "Come on, just start, get to work.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser, 47,
is a certified psychologist and advises medium-sized and large companies in management matters. She specializes in the areas of conflict management and team development, as well as giving seminars on personality development. ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser lives with her husband in Frankfurt am Main, she is a passionate gardener and photographer and finds excuses to avoid jogging.
