Accepting what we know cannot be accepted

We want to be better. It is a core motivator in our lives. We seek to do things smarter, more efficiently, more effectively. We are born with this characteristic in us and we keep developing it all of our lives by ourselves and with the help of others. 

A key initiator for improving is our ability to identify what is wrong. Things that do not match our expectations, that lead to undesirable results. We have this ability to spot these things and name them, in all areas of our lives. Having identified such an improvement opportunity should trigger our attempt to improve. And many times it does. 

There are two possible resulting behaviors; the first one is making a choice to improve, the second is making the choice not to do anything. Clearly, when we make the first we may still not solve the problem, but when we chose the second we make a conscious to continue to leave with a problem we are aware exists. Why?

Well, one possible answer is - yes it is a problem, we are aware of it's existence but it is not  important enough to make the effort to improve, or maybe it is important enough but the effort required for improving is too big compared to the expected benefit, another possible answer is that we do not know how to solve the problem. Of course, there are many other possible answers. whatever your answer is, it will not change one important fact - you will continue leaving with the existing undesirable reality even though you are aware to the fact it is undesirable. 

And that is impossible for us - we simply cannot accept what cannot be accepted, and therefore we must make it acceptable. How do we "convert" the unacceptable to be acceptable? We make a story, a justifying story. We make such a good story so that we get to the point we profoundly believe in it to the extent we will defend it with all of our might. By that, when an opportunity to improve what we know (or at least knew) needs improvement arises, we will (mostly) refuse to accept it. it is a vicious cycle. It starts with us wanting to improve something and ends with us continuously increasing our resistance to any attempt to improve that same thing. It starts with a desire to make things better and ends with a growing resistance to even consider improvement. We become emotionally intolerant. And what keeps us sane is our story, thus we hang to it even stronger. We become, our biggest obstacle to improvement. 

This is a defense mechanism. We cannot live in this dissonance, we need to have a consistent story. That is not negative by itself. It turns negative when we get to the point that the keeping the story alive becomes our goal. And what is even sadder is that often times this is not even our story, we 'inherited" the story from others. This is the case in organizations, we come to them and we heat their stories, we accept some of them as if they are our stories, and before we know it, they become ours, and we will defend them in the same passion. 

To make a real breakthrough it is not a bad idea to identify the stories that you have the strongest feelings about - these are probably your biggest improvement opportunities. Your biggest challenge will be just to let go, but the reward will be disproportional!