Meir Ezra: 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)."

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