A successful person owns a plan and a timetable to achieve it, the unsuccessful owns nothing but justifications. Justification is a threat to success and leads to deviation from the reality and the truth. Man will find excuses for his behaviors that have no relation whatsoever with truth.
Parents justify their unjustified and cruel treatment of their children acclaiming that they are behaving them; while in fact they are depriving them from their love and affection which would affect their future patterns of behaviors.
Justifications are also unacceptable in work and relationships as they lead a person to failure. “Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.” A justifier has no trust in people’s appreciation, so he uses justifications which lead him to feel that he is a failure on the social level.
A critical outcome of justification is that it makes a person unable to evaluate his actions; thus unable to correct his mistakes. The expected outcome would be nothing but losing any chance of success. If he is trying to deceive others then he would be deceiving himself in the first place.
You are a human and you make mistakes
Evading justifications needs a realization that we are all humans and we make mistakes. Mistakes would never lessen your self-respect or appreciation. You would never learn any life lessons except through mistakes. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, however, don’t repeat them.
Problems are new experiences no excuses
Don’t turn any problem you encounter to an excuse for not doing a duty but rather to a motive for success. A problem is a chance to exert efforts and use your full potential. If it were not for problems that people face, man would never have exerted any effort or created new inventions. Therefore think positively that God has allowed that you encounter those problems to develop your intellectual abilities.
Have you heard about “Tony” DeBlois ? . He was a blind American autistic savant and musician. He suffered from autism and lost his hearing ability and that affected his sight, however he continued playing piano till he graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He kept playing music to the whole world.
Don’t allow people to drive you all the time to find justifications and excuses. Don’t lose your peace and keep your goal in mind. You don’t have to justify your actions for any reason, especially for those who mistrust you. Be sure that whoever knows you would trust you. When you make a mistake, try to apologize and fix it. Abraham Lincoln has said that had never read the insulting messages that he received and of course never answered them because if he has spent his time reading it, he would never have the chance to offer his people anything.
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
