Do you find yourself justifying the decisions you make to others around you? Do you realize why you do it and is it really necessary to seek approval?
How much should you worry about justifying your life choices to other people? The short answer is not a whole lot! It’s normal to worry about what people are saying because it’s a natural human tendency to want to preserve a stable and positive self-image. But, judging other people is also a natural human behavior.
The people around us often critically judge many choices we make on a daily basis, especially the decisions of women. It doesn’t matter if they are close to you such as family, friends and co-workers, or you’ve never met them such as those trolling social media sites, there are more than enough people waiting to comment on a choice you’ve made in your life.
Questioning yourself and justifying your life choices
The judgment and commentary passed by such people make us question ourselves and lead us to start justifying our choices. When we need to justify our actions, it usually points to one or more of these three things.
You’re trying to rationalize the action you’ve made. You’re trying to defend an action, and that is the right one for the situation. You’re explaining an action that might not obviously look good, or seem necessary.
Basically, when you start justifying, you are trying to give value to choices you’ve made that you don’t feel can stand on their own.
But, justifying something is actually leading you to believe that the decision or move you made was wrong in the first place. Most often, this is not true, the reason that we worry about judgments and feel the need to rationalize, defend, explain and above all else justify, is because we care too much about what people think. [Read: 5 important lessons to deal with judgmental people]
The fundamental truth is that you cannot control what other people think of you, and chasing this will only cause you to be upset and tired most of the time.
The things you never have to justify to anyone else
But a lot of the decisions *actually most of them* that people insist on judging are, in fact, not anyone else’s business at all. If you’ve made the best possible decision for yourself, and feel strongly about your choice, then you should never have to justify any of the following things.
#1 Anything that goes on, in, or anywhere near your body
For pretty much all of time, women have had to justify almost everything about their bodies. But you should never ever have to explain, defend or rationalize anything about your body to anyone else.
This includes never justifying: your hairstyle, body weight, how much body hair you have, the clothes you wear, what you eat and when, what you do and do not drink, if you want to wear make up and how much, the fact that you’re on your period, any of your sexual preferences and habits, how often you have sex and with who, not wanting to have sex, wanting to have solo sex, experimenting with sex, and generally anything else that would go on, in or near your body doesn’t ever need to be justified.
#2 If you choose to build a family, or not.
Women are constantly judged on their decisions relating to having a family, or not. But you should never justify any of these things pertaining to your family life, because simple put – you don’t have to.
Never feel the need to justify: if you want to get married, who you want to marry, that you don’t want to get married, your age when you want to get married, whether you want to have kids, that you don’t want to have kids, when you have kids, who you have kids with, how you raise your kids, if you choose to put yourself first, if you choose to put your personal life and your family before your career, if you choose to put your professional life before having a family, your personal independence.
#3 Your educational, career and (non)religious choices.
Everyone wants to comment on what’s best for you in life, whether that be concerned with school, work and even your religious and spiritual choices.
Never justify: if you want to go to university, if you don’t want to go to university, if you dropped out of university, having a lot of student debt from university, not working in the field of your degree, working in your degree field, choosing the job with the lower salary, choosing the job with the higher salary, out-earning people around you, being a workaholic, not being a workaholic, believing in a God, not believing in God. [Read: 12 insightful life lessons to have a much better life]
#4 Your past.
Your past is something that will always exist, it never disappears and it always finds a way to come up in the present and future. That is because our past is what shaped us into who we are today, and there is no reason that at any point you should have to justify that.
Throughout our lives, we find ourselves surrounded by judgmental people who are willing to comment on any number of our personal choices. It’s important to never feel like you NEED to rationalize, defend and explain those decisions to any one.
Often, we are trying to justify our choices to other people so that we can accept and work through what is on our own minds. If I find myself in justification mode, it’s usually because some part of me feels insecure about a choice I’ve made, or I’m wondering if some of the commentary and judgment people have passed is true. It’s important to work past this insecurity and be sure about the decisions you make for yourself and about your life.
[Read: Low self worth, doubt and 5 steps to start seeing yourself in better light]
So, stop worrying about the life choices you’ve made, or are making, as there is no reason to justify them to yourself or the people surrounding you. You know what makes you who you are, and you need to stand by that and feel confident in the decisions you make for yourself!
