Rationalization and the Stories We Tell Ourselves (rebroadcast)

Hacking Your ADHD

William Curb

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 702 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Resistance is the embodiment of the I don't wanna's - the part of us that keeps us from doing our work - or anything for that matter. And a big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize what we're doing - I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else and then my brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching youtube instead of working on this week's episode.

In today's episode we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways that we do it, and also some of the ways we can start working on reducing the amount of rationalization that we are doing.

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Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/rationalization

This Episode's Top Tips

Rationalization is our brains attempting to explain or justify our behavior or an attitude with logical reasons. The difference between reasoning and rationalization is that with reasoning we are trying to apply logic to come to a conclusion, when we're rationalizing, we have a conclusion and we're making up reasons for it.
One way we use rationalization is through the stories we are telling ourselves - we come up with reasons to explain why someone is acting the way they are (which we have to because we don't have access to their thoughts) but we're not always very accurate in our assessment as to why people act the way they are acting. We can use the phrase, "the story I'm telling myself" to help navigate the reality of a story.
We also tell stories about ourselves - these are often based in fear and lead us to create more and more rationalizations. Use getting upset as a signal to get curious and explore these stories - and remember that you don't have to do it alone.
One of the easiest ways to make rationalizing harder is to have a clear goal - this means knowing what the goal is and also knowing the reason why behind the goal. Since we have ADHD we've also got to work on making sure that we are creating reminders about what our goals are - just because a goal feels important when we make it doesn't mean we're going to remember why we're doing it 2 weeks from now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD, part of the ADHD Rewired Podcast Network.
0:08.9	I'm your host, William Kerb, and I have ADHD.
0:12.0	On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain.
0:18.7	Today, we're talking about rationalization, a word that I'm just constantly surprised
0:23.2	to them spelling correctly. So a few weeks ago, no wait, it was a couple of months ago now,
0:28.4	I released an episode on Fighting Resistance, and honestly, I did think that was just a couple of
0:33.2	weeks ago. How did that happen? Anyways, in fighting resistance, I talked about how resistance
0:38.5	is the embodiment of the I Don't Wantas, the part of us that keeps us from doing our work,
0:43.4	or anything that matters. A big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize
0:48.4	what we're doing. I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else, and then my
0:52.8	brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching YouTube instead of working on this week's episode.
0:58.1	So in today's episode, we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways
1:02.6	that we do it, and also some of the ways we can start working on reducing the amount of rationalization
1:07.0	that we are doing. If you'd like to follow along with the show notes page, you can find that at hacking your ADHD.com slash rationalization.
1:15.7	Before we get started, I'd just like to invite you to check out the Hacking Your ADHD Patreon.
1:21.2	The show is free to listen to, but I put a lot of effort into every episode.
1:25.3	So if you love the show, have the means, and would like to
1:28.2	support it, I'd appreciate you heading over to hacking your ADHD.com slash Patreon and checking
1:34.2	out what I have to offer. If you want even more hacking your ADHD, at the $10 tier,
1:39.1	you can get bonus content every month with minisodes that don't appear on the podcast. So just
1:43.9	head over to hacking your ADHD.com slash Patreon and find the tier that's right for you.
1:50.0	All right, keep on listening to find out why it's so easy to decide that, well, it's going to be okay just this one time for the fifth time in a row. So the first thing we need to start with actually knowing what a rationalization is.
	...

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