Breaking the Cycle of Denial for a Better Life

Have you ever been caught red handed doing something and you just denied that you even did it? I remember one time when I was a school teacher, I caught one of my high school girls doing something she shouldn't have been doing and when I confronted her with it, I'll never forget what she said. She looked at me and said, you don't understand teenagers very well. We have a motto, Deny, deny, deny till you die. Is that a good way to live? Is that a good idea? Will that bring you a successful life? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about on this week's podcast.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A Rome author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm and my background has been primarily in the field of education. I love school, I love students. I love being involved in the day to day busyness and activity of history, English, math and science and sports and lunch and all the different things. It was several years that I taught school, but then I became a school administrator and I was probably way, you know, out of my league. I really didn't know how to do that. I just knew I like kids, I like parents and I like school environment and it was great. So sometimes I would be teaching or working with preschoolers, sometimes with elementary age, other days it was a middle school day and then some days it was a senior high school day. I just discovered that there's a lot of difference in students, especially at different ages. You know, someone once wisely told me, when children are little, you have little challenges with them, but when they get bigger, you have bigger challenges with them. Well, I want to share with you something that happened to me when I was a school administrator and then get back to the motto that one of my high school students told me a little bit later. So I was walking down the hall one day and a school principal, you are supposed to do m b W a. I don't know if you know what that is. MBWA is managing by walking around. That is a known technique and leadership position. By walking around, you manage, you make yourself very evident or very, you appear to be involved in everything. That's the job of a school principal, not to stay in their office and hide all day. But MBWA manage by walking around. This technique is sometimes used in business as well. You're not trying to be a snoopervisor, but you're trying to make Yourself a supervisor where you walk around, you interact with teachers, you see kids in the hall, you go in the bathroom, you're everywhere. I was very, very, very well trained. Some of my mentors and teachers in my master's degree said, make yourself visible. You need to appear everywhere every day. Walk in and out of classrooms, go to the lunchroom, go to the daycare, go to the early morning preschool, go to the late afternoon after school care. Just make yourself visible and available. So I listened to those that taught me, you know what? They were right. I discovered running a school does not work well by staying in an office and hiding all day. It works better by mbwa managing by walking around. And I found that people began to be very comfortable with seeing me. Sure, I had time in my office, that I had to have meetings and sometimes faculty meetings, sometimes meeting with parents, but I just did not want to stay cooped up in my office all day, trapped behind a desk. So I would get up and walk around. I would walk in the office, walk in the bathrooms, of course, the men's bathroom. I would make sure that I was visible in the high school, the middle school, the elementary school. Our school went from kindergarten K4 all the way through the 12th grade. We had 550 students, 65 faculty members, and every day they could count on seeing me all around the school. As a matter of fact, it did create a little bit of a problem because I discovered quickly, if I walked into a classroom and then I left after a period of time, the teachers were a little nervous. One of them later told me, I don't know if I'm in trouble or not. I don't know if I did a good job or a bad job, because I don't. I don't hear from you. And I learned real quickly that if I'm in a classroom, I need to let the teacher know you did a good job or if there was a note. I always told the teachers they had boxes that they would check in the morning or check in the afternoon before they left for notes and messages and different things, things that they needed, you know, like lunch information or menus or report cards or 101 other things. So I told the teachers, y' all have to understand, I can't write 25 notes a day. So if you see a note in your box that says, hey, please see me before you leave today, come by the office and I'll share something with you. It'll never be harsh. It may be something I need you to do differently. I may be something I really want to thank you about. If you don't have a note in your box, just know this. Everything's fine. You did great. No note is like no news is good news. If you do get a note, stop by the office to see me. And even then, I promise you I'm not going to yell at you. I'm not going to. You're not in trouble. There may be just one or two things that I need to talk to you about that I noticed that need either some praise to you or correction by you. So it worked out great. I mean, I had a great job, a great school teacher, students. I loved it and it prospered. Well, one day I was walking down the hall doing my mbwa managing by walking around. I passed a second grade classroom. Now the classroom doors had a glass window in the middle of them at the top. Maybe you remember back in your school days. The doors were solid, heavy doors. Except there was a glass window at the top of the door, probably one foot by one foot square that you could look into the classroom and also the teacher could look out, see who's knocking on the door or to make sure that the children were safe. And you always had an opportunity to have some visibility in and out of the classroom. So I'm walking down the hall and I look and I pass a second grade classroom. And just my luck. Talking about being in the right place at the right time, I saw a little girl. Her name was Jatha. I'll never forget. She's the only student I ever taught by that name. Jatha pulled a little girl's hair who was sitting right in front of her. And I mean she yanked it hard and the little girl started crying whose hair had been pulled. And so the teacher was in a reading circle with the group reading and the teacher stopped what she was doing. I watched the whole thing, walked over and I saw Jayther shaking her head and holding her hands up like I don't, I don't know. The little girl who sat in front of her was holding her head, crying again. These are seven, eight year old kids, second graders. So open the door. And I told the teacher, I said, could you come here a second? I said I was in the right place at the right time. I just saw everything that happened. I said, send Jaytha out here in the hallway. Jatha got up, teacher got her and told her to come out, talk to me. I said, jatha, what? What just happened? She said, Mr. Rome. And this was back in the day before I had my doctorate. So I was still Mr. Rome. Then she said, Mr. Rome is the strangest thing. She said, the little girl in front of me just started crying for no apparent reason. And then she said I pulled her hair. She said, I had no idea what. What happened. I said, jay, you didn't see where I was standing, did you? She said, what do you mean? I said, do you see this door? Do you see this glass? I was walking by the door and I saw you pull her hair. I saw you with my own eyes. She said, I don't know what you're talking about. She said, I didn't pull her hair. I don't know why you would accuse me of that. I said, jason, listen carefully. You're not in trouble right now. All I want you to do, I'm going to ask the little girl to come out here and I want you to apologize to her and tell her you're very sorry and you won't do that again. She said, well, I'll do it if you want me to. I'll apologize to her, but I didn't pull her hair. I said, jacob, do you see my eyeballs? I said, I was looking at you with this set of eyeballs, and I looked through the door and I saw you pull her hair. And then she looked at me and said, why are you picking on me, boy? I was. I was thinking to myself, this is going downhill fast. I said, jake, I'm not picking on you. Let me explain one more time. I saw what you did. I want you to apologize to her. Tell her you're sorry. Say please forgive me and not do that anymore, and it'll all be over. It'll all be settled. Do you understand? She said, I understand that you're being mean to me. I said, jason, come with me. Let's go to my office. So we walked down to my office, and I'm thinking to myself, I just. I don't. I've never seen anything like this before. So this is back in the mid-70s, and believe it or not, I hope you won't hate me, but we still could spank children. Now, I don't think that it's ever a good idea to be abusive in any way, but you've heard the old expression, spare the rod and spoil the child. I don't believe in being unkind. I don't believe in being mean. But sometimes you have to get someone's attention, especially before they end up doing something really serious and ended up going to jail or worse. So I just. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know I didn't have a course on how to overcome this kind of situation, but I looked, I got my office, I got my paddle out, and I hope you won't think bad of me. But I said, jake, I don't want to spank you. All I want you to do is tell me the truth. I saw you do that. I'm going to go get the little girl, bring her to my office. Maybe you didn't want to apologize to her in the hall in front of everybody. I'm going to bring her in the office here with you and me and you can apologize. She said, I didn't do it. I promise you I didn't do it. So I said, okay, that's it. So I. I said, stand up. Come right over here. And I told her I was going to have to give her. We used to call them licks. Get. You're going to get three licks. I wasn't going to hurt her. I wasn't going to abuse her. I just wanted to bring some punishment. I know that may not even be. You may not even like the term, but I have discovered, boy, oh boy, sometimes when you face punishment in your life, it really straightens you up real quickly. If you don't believe that, go over the next hill and see the policeman turn his lights on you and give you a ticket that'll slow you down. I know. It's happened to me several times. So Jathan was standing there and I gently but firmly said to her, this is your last chance. I said, you're going to get three licks or you can apologize to her. This is it. I need you to tell me the truth. She said, I promise you I did not do it. And believe it or not, the thought went through my head at that moment, maybe she didn't do it. Maybe I was so wrong. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. Maybe I saw somebody on another row. And then I thought, no, if I don't deal with this, I might as well turn in my credentials of being the school principal and trying to deal with kids who have challenges and problems. Because I know what I saw and I saw what I know. So I said, okay, it's your choice. So I gave her the three links, not hard, but enough to let her know that she had been disciplined. And she turned around. I hope you're still with me and haven't tuned me out. She turned around, threw her arms around my waist, buried her head in my stomach and cried her eyes out and said, I did it. I did it. I Did it? I said, jatha, why didn't you just admit that? She said, I don't know. I thought I maybe could talk you out of giving me a spanking. And she said this, and I know I needed it, but I thought I could talk you out of it. And she said, I'm so sorry, I'll apologize to my friend. I went and got her, came to the office, she apologized to her, they hugged. It was wonderful. I hugged both of them, told them I just thought they were wonderful young girls, took them back to class. Nobody knew anything about it but me and Jatha and the other little girl. And the little girl did not even know all I had gone through with Jatha. Now why did I tell you that story? Because Jatha learned at a young age what my high school student told me years later. Deny, deny, deny till you die. And you see, many people have that attitude of, I didn't do anything wrong. Why are you picking on me? Why are you being so mean to me? Why aren't you trying to accuse me of something I didn't do when all they have to do is apologize. All they have to do is say I was wrong. All they have to do is say, that was my fault. There's a verse in Proverbs that says, whoever covers his sin shall not prosper, but whoever confesses it and forsakes it will find mercy. That's why I knew if Jatha will just confess it, she will find mercy. It will all be cleared up. Those two students have probably taught me more than my master's degree in education because they taught me very well that it is inside of all of us to just deny, deny, deny till we die. And that does no one any good. And worst of all, it destroys your health, it destroys your mental ability, and it destroys your personal growth and development because you're holding on to something that would be so easy to let go of. He reminds me of the story of the little boy whose hand was stuck in a vase. They put vaseline around it. They did everything could to get it out. Finally, they had to break the vase with a hammer and told them to be very careful, we don't want to cut you. They broke the vase and when they broke it, they saw his hand was bald in a fist and. And they said, why is your hand and a fist. And he opened it and said, I didn't want to drop my penny. He was holding onto a penny. When he could have let go of it, his hand would have been smoother and could have come out. But no he had to do things his way to keep his penny. And the beautiful vase had to be broken. I don't want that to be in my life. I don't want friendships and relationships destroyed because it's my way or the highway. I do things the way I want it, and if you don't like it, you can lump it, take it down the road and dump it. I am going to have my way, and if I need to, I will deny, deny, deny till I die. If that's your attitude, I have two words for you. Good luck. Because you're going to need it. But if your attitude is, hey, I messed up, I was wrong, please forgive me, I'll do better next time. You will have a great life. And guess what? It's your choice. You can choose in everything you do. I have learned to develop my apology muscle. It's really strong. I am very quick. I'm the first one to say, hey, that was my fault. I'm sorry, please forgive me, I messed up. I didn't understand that. I hope you can find it in your heart to forget. I'll try to do better next time. That's strong in me and the reason it gives me a great life. I hope this podcast has been helpful. I. I hope you'll consider what I said. Be careful to be quick to apologize, to confess that you did something wrong. Ask people to forgive you when you make a mistake or you mess up, own up to it sounds my fault. Please forgive me. I'll try to do better next time. You'll be the winner for it. You will be the one to go far in life because you understand if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. Hope you like this podcast. I I'll see you on another one again real soon. Bye Bye.

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