Denial:  Change can only happen when you Acknowledge the need

The film “K19 The Widowmaker” covers an event in one of the first Russian nuclear submarines in 1961. In the movie, they are under intense pressure to launch in time.  The nuclear technician knows there is a leak in the reactor. However he chooses denial instead of reality.  He chooses to tap the gauges and hope for the best instead of reporting the fault.   This has disastrous effects which come close to precipitating a nuclear detonation.   All members of the onboard repair team die within a month.   The submarine is nicknamed Widowmaker and ‘Hiroshima’ after the incident. DenialThis is Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev, commander of the submarine at the time of the nuclear accident.

Are you in Denial?

So, are you tapping the gauges? Or have you chosen to acknowledge what is happening in your conscious and unconscious world? Problems don’t get better with time. If you refuse to acknowledge your own self-destructive behaviours, not only will they continue but they will become more deeply entrenched and grow more resistant to change. Sometimes the symptoms are hidden from us. “Perceptual defence” is a mechanism which protects us from things our minds determine that we cannot manage. This selective amnesia, or ‘denial’, protects those who have witnessed horrifying or very painful situations, blocking the events from their memories. In an experiment, some old dears from a church group were connected to polygraph equipment and shown words on a screen for varying lengths of time. Mixed in with everyday terms were some swear-words. The women saw and read out the OK words, even when the exposure time was very short. They did not see the swear-words, even when shown for intervals 10 times longer than the benign words they did see. But with each rude word the polygraph readings went off the screen.

Denial is disastrous

Denial can quite literally kill you.  As in K19, sometimes denial prevents us from seeing the danger in our current reality. It kills what might have been a real chance to overcome a problem had the solution been pursued in time. Are you ready to be brutally honest about where your life is right now? When we lie to ourselves by misrepresenting the truth or by omission we can distort our view of reality and compromise an otherwise sound strategy. Are you ready to question every belief, every position and every pattern in your life? None of us can afford the luxury of defensiveness, lies and denial.

Here are some questions on which you way wish to reflect:

  • Am I living with intent?
  • Am I extending myself to create something new, something I really want?
  • Am I distracted? Am I partying or watching TV when I should be working?
  • Am I living the life I want?
  • Am I procrastinating, leaving no time to complete important work?
  • Am I just not mustering the necessary enthusiasm to complete high quality assignments and projects?
  • Am I clear on my ambitions, on my goals? Or am I just drifting?

Stop making excuses and start creating results. Be truthful about what isn’t working in your life.  Choose now to overcome denial.