Defending Your Ditch

In a ditch? There is a way out . . . but only if you first notice you're in one.

Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

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Transcript

Defending Your Ditch

Ever notice how easy it is to explain why we do the things that keep hurting us?

“The reason I drink is because . . .”

“The reason I spend more than I make . . .”

“The reason I cheated . . .”

“The reason I gamble . . .”

“The reason I shut people out emotionally . . .”

And sometimes the explanation sounds so reasonable, we almost convince ourselves it’s justified.

But here’s the problem: the moment we defend a problem behavior, we usually guarantee its return.

We dig the hole . . . then defend the shovel.

You can hear it in phrases like:

“I make no apology for it.”

“If you were me, you’d have done the same thing.”

“I had no choice.”

“I’d do it the exact same way again.”

Those statements may win sympathy. They may even win agreement. But agreement doesn’t get you out of the ditch. It just gives you company down there.

Getting out starts with something much simpler: noticing you’re in a hole in the first place.

That sounds obvious, but defenders rarely notice it. They’re too busy building a case for why the hole makes sense.

I remember a story from years ago about football player Michael Vick. After his legal troubles, he filed for bankruptcy. A judge rejected part of his plan because Vick wanted to keep three luxury cars.

Now think about that for a second. Part of what got him into financial trouble was excessive spending, yet he was still defending the very lifestyle that helped create the problem.

But here’s the encouraging part: eventually he stopped digging. He rebuilt his life and later became a college football coach. That’s what can happen when someone quits defending the behavior that buried them.

And honestly, all of us do this in some area of life.

We defend habits that aren’t working. We argue for our limitations. We defend attitudes that isolate us. We defend routines that exhaust us. We defend strategies that keep producing the same miserable results.

The danger is that defending the indefensible can become a personal prison. You keep repeating the same mistakes and serving the same sentence.

But awareness changes things.

The moment you notice what you’re defending, you create a little space between you and the behavior. And that space? That’s where change begins.

It’s also worth noticing this: if your current strategy brought you someplace you don’t want to be, doubling down on it probably isn’t the answer.

So pay attention to the things you automatically justify. Watch how often you defend something that clearly isn’t serving you anymore.

That awareness is the beginning of climbing out.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite lines:

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

All the best,

John