Why facing up to your besetting sins is the only way to make positive life and career changes

What’s a besetting sin? It’s a failing or type of bad behavior that has become so ingrained and typical that it has gained control of someone’s life and actions. He or she is becoming — or maybe has already become —the kind of person defined by the sin. If your besetting sin is pride, you are on the road to becoming an arrogant person. If it is anger, you are way down the track to becoming the kind of irritable, red-faced bully who always seems to be in a fury about something.

I’m not talking about ’sin’ in any religious sense. I am neither a religious person, nor believe in that concept of sin. ‘Besetting sins’ is, for me, simply a short, convenient phrase to use to describe habitual — and typically unconscious — behavior that offends against the fundamentals of relating to others in a civilized society. When we act in this habitually dysfunctional way, we limit our chances of achieving what we want. When we inflict our besetting sins on others, we diminish their enjoyment of life as well as our own.

The Ancient Greek word translated in modern-day bibles as “sin” meant to miss what you aimed at, like an archer missing the target. It’s a mistake, not something inherent in being human. Like all mistakes, therefore, it can be corrected with a little effort and clear-headedness.

From occasional slip-up to character flaw

How does something that maybe begins as little more than an occasional mishap turn into a fully-fledged and ingrained character flaw? What makes it so common in your behavior that people use it to describe you (”She’s such a self-righteous bigot” or “He’s such an arrogant bully”) is that, in some twisted way, it works for you.

No one ever made a habit out of behavior that didn’t produce something they wanted. If you tried yelling at people to get them to work harder and they all fell about laughing, you wouldn’t repeat the attempt often enough for it to become a habit. Only if they all scurry about, looking busier than before, might you to start to feel, deep inside, that throwing a tantrum was rather an easy way of producing a quick spurt of effort.

Crime pays and sin works

People commit crimes because, by and large, it pays better than whatever other other type of work they are willing or able to do. There’s a risk of going to prison, but they accept that in much the same way an entrepreneur accepts the risk of bankruptcy: you hope you’ll be smart enough to avoid it, but, if not, it’s the price of taking that kind of work.

People commit behavioral sins, especially habitual, besetting ones, because they appear to work — or work better than whatever other options they can think of that they would be willing to try.

Bullies stay with their crass behavior because it works better for them than making the effort to excel. Bullying tactics make them feel important. Of course, it’s a fake — no one becomes genuinely important by belittling and bullying others — but we’ll come to that in a moment.

By dismissing most other people as beneath their notice, arrogant bosses get to feel superior without the effort of actually being so; and, if they can get others to accept their pose as real, also enjoy the status and financial benefits of a superiority they haven’t earned.

If sin works, why don’t we all do it?

We do. We all have besetting sins that appear to work well enough for us to hold onto them. Maybe not as dramatic as the ones I have been using as examples, but useful to our egos nonetheless. Minor cruelty, big-headedness, petty theft, bigotry, harassment and vengefulness are common betsetting sins at all levels of society.

The besetting sins of business leaders are pomposity, overrating their own talent and importance, taking themselves way too seriously, oversimplifying complex problems, patronising employees and customers, and being slippery with the truth. Those of people lower down the corporate food chain include gossiping, back-biting, bitchiness, laziness, jealousy, whining, and blaming others for their own mistakes and misfortunes.

All of them work in some twisted way. All are preferred to being open, honest, and straightforward, largely because that takes effort and courage and most of us are lazy and fearful. The cumulative result of all these millions of petty, miserable little sins is the mess our world is in.

That’s why we shouldn’t go on doing what we do. We’re messing up our world and our lives and making existence nearly unbearable for some poeple.

Are your trophies all fakes?

The problem with besetting sins is that they make you miss what you are aiming at. You want to be happy, successful, well-regarded, and loved. But, because you don’t get your aim straight — because you choose means that appeal to laziness, cowardice, and pettiness — you don’t get what you want. You can force people to say they like and respect you; you can’t force it to be the truth. You’ve missed what you were aiming at.

Then, because we keep missing, we decide to settle for just the outward appearance of what we desire: for putting on airs and graces, rather than being truly revered; for pushing other people about, in place of seeking their willing co-operation; for demanding instant obedience, instead of winning trust.

If you’re unhappy with some aspect of your life — if it’s not delivering what you want — it’s worth slowing down and facing a few difficult questions:

• Are you settling for the appearance of success, rather than doing the hard work needed to make that success real? Are your trophies all fakes?
• Do you recognize your own besetting sins: the habitual wrong choices that come from being too lazy or afraid to do things the right way, when the wrong way seems so much easier?
• Do certain bad behaviors in others make you especially angry? Might it be because they reflect your own negative habits back to you, and you don’t like to be reminded of them?
• Would you like others to treat you they way you treat them? If not, why do you deserve better? Are they so different to you?
• When you look at your life in total, are you leaving the world a better place for your presence, and the people around you happier for having known you? If you aren’t, what on earth is the purpose of your life? Why should the rest of us put up with you at all?

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