Overtime, we come to see ourselves in certain self-justifying ways. We end up carrying these self-justifying images with us into new situations. We don’t see people straight forwardly as people. Rather, we see them in terms of the self-justifying images we’ve created.
- If people act in ways that challenge the claim made by a self-justifying image, we see them as threats.
- If they reinforce the claim made by a self-justifying image, we see them as allies
- If they fail to matter as a self-justifying image, we see them as unimportant
Re-source: Reprogram
Let’s say you have a self-justifying image that says “you know everything,” how do you suppose you would feel towards someone who has suggested something new to you?
- You might find something wrong with the suggestion, and that person would stop coming to you with new ideas, and then you would end up not learning new things.
- Our self-justifying image about being learned can be the very thing that keeps us from learning (Is knowing everything really what I am most concerned about?)
- Our major concern is about our self and how we look
- This is the nature of most self-justifying images
craving and resource from “Leadership and Self-Deception” (Getting out of the box) by: Arbiner institute