When I worked in the sunglass business we would often perform market research with our consumers. When asked why they would spend $129 on this famous brand the response was almost always “because of the quality of the lenses”. Now if you pushed them on what about the quality of the lenses attracted them, they were unable to expand on the topic. Actually very few even knew how the lenses worked or what made a good lens….but that was their – declared – principle motive for purchase. It wasn’t that it was on the face of every celebrity in town, or that all their friends had it, or that it made them feel like Tom Cruise….nope. It was the lens quality. We began to call this the “functional alibi”.
So what is an alibi? Technically we use it to mean justification, but the etymology of the word leads us to a definition of “elsewhere”. The process of assigning something elsewhere: our presence, our activities, our responsibility.
I bring up alibis because blaming others is one of the single greatest tools we use to keep ourselves stuck in repetitive loops. This happens because instead of seeing how we show up in situations, and perpetuate our circumstances, we are often busy looking for the responsible party – elsewhere.
If we analyse our own speech about our behavior and why we did – or didn’t – do something, how often do we say “well it’s because…” and then we plug in circumstances that assign responsibility elsewhere? Because my father was an alcoholic, because my wife was a narcissist, because I’m too busy at work, because he doesn’t call as much as he should…
These functional alibis are great, because they’re real. They’re things that actually did happen and likely did have an impact. And the more we continue to assign the responsibility of these events as deciding factors in our behavior, the longer we keep them alive and the more power we give them over us. By releasing those alibis, we take back the power of our own actions. We can see why we might like to comfortably hold onto them, no?
So I would invite you this week to pay attention to your alibis. When you started talking about something you did – or didn’t do – listen for “well it’s because…” and if what follows is anything but “because I chose to engage that way in that situation”, then you know you’ve got an alibi on your hands.
This isn’t to make you feel bad, we ALL do this. It’s easier to see other people’s role in dynamics rather than see our own. You can’t observe the mountain if you are the mountain. So this is an exercise I’d like to give you that works wonders for me. It’s all about shifting your perspective.
Let’s say you’ve identified your functional alibi, and you’ve identified who the guilty party is in offending you or making you behave in a certain way. I’d like you to project yourself into the other person and see your behavior through their eyes. How would you like it if the the other person did to you, what you were doing to them? How would you react if they said to you what you said to them? What would you have done in their situation given your actions? This exercise is so revealing and really enlightening.
Once you’re clear on your own role in the situation, you eliminate the need for alibis and are able to steer yourself, free from other people’s chains, in the direction you want.
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