On leadership and self deception

When we get into a defensive stance, where we blame others about a given problem, we end up making the problem a lot bigger. This sounds pretty obvious. However, when we are in this situation, more often than not, it's very hard to notice.

Identify someone with a problem, and you'll be identifying someone who resists the suggestion that he has one

As human beings, we are very quick to blame others for a mistake, and very reluctant to assume our responsibility in that mistake. This behaviour ends up widening the gap and enlarging the problem.

When we react in this way, we are failing to see others as human beings. Instead, we perceive them as objects with needs and desires much less important than our own.

When immersed in this state of mind, you've probably reluctantly said sorry to someone very close to you. How did they take it? You probably realised that they didn't receive it well. Because no matter what we do on the outside, people respond to what we feel in the inside. So if we're not feeling it, they won't either.

When we are unable to see these powers in play, we are being victims of self deception. We get into this state by not being truthful to ourselves.

In many instances when a problem arises, our instinct tells us what we should do. Eg. You run out of milk and you know you could easily run to the supermarket and buy a carton. We self deceive ourselves by expecting someone else to buy that carton, and when they don't, we build resentment towards them. And from then, the problem just builds up.

We start to think the other person who we put our expectations on is the culprit, when in fact, we are the culprit ourselves. This leads us to more and more negative emotions whose sole purpose is for us to find justification. When we are in this state of mind, we love this circle of emotions. We need people to cause us trouble because we need to feel justified.

The key takeaway is we need to start noticing when these emotions are in play and we need to take responsibility for them. It's much easier to cut the circle at the very beginning, by doing what we know is right.