| The Benefits of Being
Unreasonable
You succeed when you are unreasonable.
You neither give nor accept excuses. You insist on success.
L. Ron Hubbard defines reasonableness as "faulty
explanations." When you agree with faulty explanations, you
are too reasonable.
Examples of faulty explanations:
"I can’t repair your furnace today
as it might rain." The truth
is, the repairman is going to a basketball game.
"None of the staff will work past
5:00." The truth is, the
manager does not want to work past 5:00.
"I can’t pay you as I promised as
my wife is sick and can’t fix our meals." The
truth is, he is spending the money elsewhere.
"We’ll never get this project done
today as we’ve never done it in one day before."
The truth is, they’ve never tried to get it done in one day.
Why Agree?
If you agree with faulty explanations,
you agree to fail. Excuses,
justifications and reasonableness produce nothing.
Yet disagreeing often helps you succeed.
"If you can’t fix the furnace
today because of the rain, no problem. I’ll see if I can find someone
who repairs furnaces, despite the rain."
"I believe lots of people will work
past 5:00. You are the manager and need to handle the schedules. Do you
need me to show you how to do it?"
"Well, I’m sorry about your wife,
but don’t see how that’s related. You agreed to pay me today, so I’ll
have to get the money from you right now as you promised."
"So what if we’ve never done a
project like this in one day. We are better at this than ever before and
I think we can get it done if we get going right now!"
The sun shines, the birds sing and
everything improves when you disagree with faulty explanations. The lies
disappear, the truth comes out and the solutions are obvious.
As well as being unreasonable about
problems with others, you must be unreasonable with yourself. For
example, "I’m tired and
want to go home early. Too bad! I need to disagree and WAKE UP! I'll
take a brisk walk. Today should be a day I can be proud of."
The most important thing you must be
unreasonable about is DOWN STATISTICS.
"The one big god-awful mistake an
executive can make in reading and managing by graph is being reasonable
about graphs. This is called JUSTIFYING A STATISTIC."
"One sees a graph down and says `Oh
well, of course, that's-----------' and at that moment you've had
it."
"Never JUSTIFY why a graph continues
to be down and never be reasonable about it. A down graph is simply a
down graph and somebody is goofing."
— L. Ron Hubbard
At some point, we have all given or
received excuses for stagnant or shrinking statistics. Because these are
faulty explanations, no solutions are possible.
"Reading skills are getting worse in
the United States because we have too many television channels."
"Our business failed because nobody
would buy our stocks any longer."
"No one buys cars from Pete because
he’s too old."
However, when you disagree with
explanations and find the truth, the solutions are OBVIOUS. Examples:
"Television has nothing to do with
reading skills. What else could it be? Oh! Are children taught to use a
dictionary?"
"Your business didn’t fail because
nobody would buy your stocks. It failed because you didn’t know what
you were doing. Do you know how to make a profit? Did you test-market
your product? Do you know how to advertise?"
"People do buy cars from older sales
people. Was Pete working every day? Has anyone trained him to
sell?"
Exercises
In the examples below, decide which are
reasonable explanations and which are the truthful statements.
"I can’t lose weight because (I’m
too busy) (I’m lazy and addicted to chocolate)."
"Company profits are soaring because
(I’m very charming) (the new computer system doubled our
efficiency)."
"I have no money because (I don’t
do financial planning) (of the economy)."
"I’m single and lonely because (I
don’t get out and meet people) (no one likes me)."
"I can’t find a good assistant
because I (have too many jobs) (am not taking the time to find
one)."
"I let people boss me around because
(I’m kind and caring) (I don’t stand up to them)." |
