# Truth + Justifications

It’s much easier to justify yourself than deal with yourself.

We all have moments from our past that we’re not particularly proud of. Things we did. Things we didn’t do. People we hurt. Relationships we damaged. And when we were in the middle of it, chances are we had plenty of reasons for why we were behaving the way we were.

That’s the problem with justifications: at the time, they make perfect sense.

If they weren’t like that, I wouldn’t have done this. If they hadn’t treated me that way, I wouldn’t have reacted this way. I was going through something. It’s how I was raised. There’s always something ready to hand—and sometimes there’s a whole stack of reasons.

But years later, when the circumstances are gone and the justifications start to fall apart, you’re left with something much harder to confront: who you had to become to do what you did.

In this episode of *Truth + Conversation*, we get into:

* Why we justify our behavior to ourselves and others
* Why those justifications can seem completely reasonable at the time
* The difference between explaining what happened and actually owning it
* Why certain moments from our past refuse to go away
* The imaginary “court of public opinion” we prepare our defenses for
* Why fear of judgment—and its consequences—keeps us carrying things we could deal with
* What it means to put your cards on the table without defending yourself
* How to take responsibility with the people who were impacted by who you were
* Why telling the truth may be uncomfortable, messy and still the only way through

As Richard Feynman put it: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Eventually, there’s a choice.

You either deal with it, or you live with it.

And sometimes the reason we choose to live with it is simply because we can’t deal with the discomfort of what dealing with it would require.