Business Insights
DON’T SAY YOU DESERVE IT IF YOU DIDN’T EARN IT
I am a firm believer that humans can justify anything. From the good, the bad, to the downright evil, humans will find some reason, no matter how minuscule, to justify their actions. As I was shopping recently, I kept hearing the sales pitch of “you deserve it” or “treat yourself” or “you work so hard, you worked for it, spoil yourself”.
Those are the same things you tell yourself anytime you are about to spend money on yourself, from the SPA to a nice dinner or some material item. And that internal invoice is damn right, you should spoil yourself! Treat yourself! But understanding why you’re doing it is even more important. One thing worse than lying to someone else, is lying to yourself.
Don’t say you deserve it if you didn’t. Just buy the damn thing and admit you wanted it and you don’t need a reason why. I am all about rewarding yourself, but it happens often in the sense that you just need a justification to spend the money. I say don’t justify it, whether you justify it or not, you will likely do it anyway.
I would rather say to myself “I really need to step my game up” vs. doing mediocre shit and wanting the world to celebrate my half ass attempt at being awesome. Most people I run into don’t know what hard work is. Whether they want to reach a fitness goal, a professional achievement or reaching whatever goal it comes to when saving money or perfecting a craft. You keep telling yourself you worked so hard, when many times you didn’t, that little voice in your head just needs a reason to reward yourself.
Understanding that you didn’t work as hard as you should is more important than lying to yourself that you did work hard. You just end up in a rut of never achieving what you wanted to AND you keep rewarding yourself for it. Treat yourself but don’t justify it. Justify it when you set a goal and blew it out of the water, then pat yourself on the back and ask what’s next.
