If I say to you “Stop making excuses!” where would it hit home the most?
Where might you find yourself squirming a wee bit in uncomfortable recognition?
When you stop and think about your general patterns and behaviour in life, how often do you find yourself giving excuses to others or to yourself in response to something?
This one really does need us to not only take our 20 seconds of insane courage to face our fears but also to take responsibility.
We make excuses about not eating healthily even though we know it is important for our physical well being.
Or we make excuses about not exercising – again – because it is raining/windy/dark/too hard/we are too tired and in so doing, take one backwards step away from our goal of being fitter.
Maybe we make excuses about not getting work done in time, or to a standard we know we can achieve.
We are late for a meeting or a friend, and we hear ourselves making excuses. Again.
The end of the week comes round, and we find that we have not achieved that one goal we set ourselves, and we make excuses to ourselves and slip further into regret and recrimination.
Why do we make excuses?
Fear.
Fear crops up in many different ways, as I was musing about here last week.
Fear of making mistakes may well be holding you back. This is real and valid, and the chances are, you WILL make mistakes.
But that is how we learn. We try, make mistakes, stop and reflect, take responsibility, learn and…try again. And next time, chances are it will work better.
This is about taking imperfect action to face the things we are making excuses about, and there is more on this here.
Procrastination, lack of discipline and laziness.
Common to all of us at some point in our lives. We can’t be bothered, or the kitchen floor suddenly needs swept even though we have an essay to finish. We put things off telling ourselves we will do it later or tomorrow. The more we do this, the more this habit takes hold. And regret, self-recrimination and self pity can be unhelpful accompanists to procrastination, let alone the panic or repercussions of not completing what we have been putting off.
Lack of motivation.
If you don’t have a clear WHY for what you are doing, chances are motivation is likely to be lacking. If the task or challenge is then also quite hard, or takes us out of our comfort zone, it becomes much easier to make an excuse for why we have not done what we said we wanted to do.
Motivation is essential to help us make forward progress in areas of change and growth. Knowing your values, and WHY you want to achieve this are important first steps. Simon Sinek has a great TED talk on the importance of starting with WHY.
Comparison with others.
Another big black hole into which we easily and often fall, and more on this in a couple of weeks.
But ask yourself just now – If I am making excuses not to do something because I am comparing how I would do it with someone else, who wins in that situation? And what do I stand to gain by stepping into the belief that I CAN and just doing it?
In making excuses, what we are seeking to do is rationalise our behaviour and justify it to others and ourselves. The more we make this a habit, the harder it is to break and make positive change.
Ultimately, we need to face up to the fact that we – and we alone – are doing this to ourselves.
We need to stop and take responsibility for our own actions, and make different choices that break these bad habits. And the more we do this, the more we gain courage to stop making excuses in the future.
So this week I encourage you to take your 20 seconds of insane courage that we have been talking about (more here) and
STOP making excuses!
Why? Because you are worth more than that (forgive me for sounding like a shampoo ad).
These excuses are holding you back from being who you want to be and achieving all you want to achieve. You know I don’t need to spell this out….simply notice where in your life you tend to make excuses, especially repeating patterns.
Take responsibility for those excuses and visualise how different your life will be when you have achieved what you have been putting off.
Then take courage and take action!