Ditch Your Excuses If You Want To Make Progress

Ditch Your Excuses If You Want To Make Progress

I have loads of reasons for not achieving what I want in any given day, month or week. In fact, some of my reasons have been with me for years.

What about you? What reasons do you have for being exactly where you are now?

Of course, I’ve written that a little tongue-in-cheek, because my reasons, and probably yours too are excuses.

If so and so would have given me the right opportunity, or if this person would have encouraged me – I could have made a million excuses on why I wasn’t playing in the NFL. You have no more excuses… what do you do from now until your opportunity presents itself? It’s all up to you.
Kurt Warner

The Excuse Slip

I’ve been excused from living my wildest dreams by the reasons I’ve allowed myself to accept and adopt.

It’s like having a little note from your parent to take to school excusing you from doing your homework because you’ve had a family get-together which kept everyone busy all weekend.

Except that now we’re adults and we haven’t got formal homework. Our homework has become the dreams, desires and aspirations we hold for ourselves and frankly, no one else cares if we go for them or not, so no little excuse slips required!

My excuses have become the justifications for exactly where I am now, they are what caused me to create the life I’m living.

What Are Your Reasons

The most common reasons I always hear from people for avoiding taking action on any goal they’re side-stepping is that they don’t have enough time and/or money. These reasons then have sub-reasons too and consist of things like:

• Health problems
• Caring for others (family, friends, pets)
• Believing others won’t support them (they might not…so?)
• Don’t know what to do or how to do it
• People like me don’t do those things

Any and all of these reasons may be valid. That’s to say, it is probably true for you, but that is just your note to the teacher. It’s you, excusing yourself from carrying out the actions you know you should be taking if you really want to achieve the life changes your desire.

Don’t let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do.
Sam Altman

But should you really be letting yourself off the hook? Or rather, do you really want to be letting yourself off the hook?

The changes you desire might be fairly simple to do, they often are, but of course, knowing what to do and actually making consistent behavioural changes isn’t always easy – and that is an excuse too! Because, whilst it’s true, it’ll still keep you stuck exactly where you are now, because this excuse allows you to tell yourself that it’s too hard…for you!

Taking Time To Hear Yourself

You can blame outside factors or make excuses about why things didn’t work out, but that doesn’t change anything.
Chris Gardner

Do you hear the reasons you give yourself to excuse your current behaviours?

How Are Your Finances Doing?

For example, if you’re spending too much money and living beyond your means, I’ve no doubt that this is causing you stress and possibly leading to arguments with other people in your life.

But what are you telling yourself that allows this situation to continue? Do these sound familiar?

• I don’t earn enough
• My rent is too high
• I don’t know where all my money goes

These may all be true, but they are all excuses for your current circumstances because all of them have possible solutions that require some kind of behaviour change. So now the questions to ask are:

• What are your true priorities?
• What are you willing to change to achieve your desired outcomes?

Even though you may think of your true priority is to manage your money well, your results are showing that this isn’t actually the case. Currently your true priorities could look something like this:

You spend and splurge as soon as payday arrives, because you’re feeling deprived, so you buy new clothes and a Dominoes. You do this before you consider setting aside money to cover your rent which isn’t due for a couple of weeks anyway. Seeing that you still have money in your bank account, you eat out a little too often and don’t take a packed lunch to work (because only nerds to that). By the time you need to pay your rent, you’re already short of cash, but you’re not sure why because you didn’t write up a budget for the month…but you’re not sure how to do that, it’s scary and anyway it would curtail your current lifestyle!

How Are Your Studies Progressing?

Here’s another example: you want to improve your results at school or college, but so far, despite your best efforts, you’ve only managed to make mediocre progress in some areas, whilst other subjects have fared even worse.

What are the excuses you’re telling yourself that allows this situation to continue?

• I’m just no good at this subject
• The teacher is lousy
• I haven’t got enough time to study
• The school library doesn’t have the books I need

Have you used any of these reasons when excusing your results? Again, they may all have a grain of truth, but, wouldn’t it be better to consider possible solutions such as..

• Speaking to your teacher about why you might be struggling with the subject
• Is it true that the teacher is lousy? Is everyone in the class failing at this subject?
• What are your TV, social, or other non-academic time commitments – be truthful
• Borrow or buy the books somewhere else!

So, once again ask yourself the questions:

• What are your true priorities?
• What are you willing to change to achieve those outcomes?

It’s important that you really understand the reasons, justifications and excuses you use to keep you where you are now. Because by knowing the stories you tell yourself, you can prepare to make changes and call yourself out when you know you’re falling for one of your old excuses again.

Don’t forget, these beliefs have been with you a long time, so they will continue to be your default thoughts even when you’re trying to make changes.

Conclusion

I think this quote form Peng Joon sums it up succinctly:

It’s not about the resource but the resourcefulness that makes all the difference.

Not getting on with things that you know you want to or should be doing isn’t the issue. Come clean about that without making excuses for the lack of action. Own your excuses and accept that until you are ready to level up your behaviour and actions, your results will remain the same.

For every reason you give yourself for not doing the things that will make a difference, there is someone out there doing it in spite of that reason. That means you can do it too, and if you did, where would that take you?

If you’re struggling with making progress and can’t get past your reasons, justifications and excuses, having a coach can help you make the headway you desire.  I currently have 3 very affordable Coaching Packages, so if you’re serious about making positive changes and living a better future, get in touch and let’s discuss the options.

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