photo from InBooming
Very often we make so many excuses for ourselves that we end up believing that they are a real block on our development. But if we analyze them deeper, we would usually realize that the biggest culprit is ourselves.
How many times do you blame bad weather for not starting to workout? Oddly enough, the bad weather stops you even when you were planning to workout at the gym! After all, bad weather is to blame for you not being in the mood to go to the gym. How many times when you woke up in the morning did you postpone your goals for the next day just because you didn’t wake up super motivated and hoped tomorrow would bring motivation on a platter and have the perfect start to the day? How many times have you decided to give up just after starting a new project? And it doesn’t matter at all whether that project was creation of a dream business or learning of a new skill. How many times have you found it too much to add 15-minute tasks to your agenda that could help you improve?
I will tell you how I caught myself creating excuses. Recently, maybe a couple of months ago, I started attending individual singing lessons. I had been dreaming about them for a long time, but I kept procrastinating. Finally, I decided to find time for my hobby. Classes are held only once a week, so homework is inevitable. And one day, as I drove from class, I caught myself looking for excuses. The teacher had assigned one exercise that day for the next week and recommended that I practice it for at least a few minutes each day.
Practice a few minutes a day — that’s how her assigned task sounded. And what do you think, all the way home I wondered if I would be able to find time for the assignment.
Truth is, anyone can spare a few minutes of their day, but in my mind it sounded like the biggest task. My subconscious deceived me. All the way home, I was thinking about how I will need to find time each day on my busy agenda for this task, but I didn’t emphasize that it’s just a few minutes a day. At the end, I laughed at myself. After all, it was just a small task, and in my mind I made it huge and hard to do. We are constantly creating excuses – that is our reality.
How to stop the mechanism of constant excuses?
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Shake your brain up
Probably the best way, at least for me personally, is talking to myself. It may sound strange, but such conversations give you the opportunity to understand what is going on with you and to stop yourself in time from making a bad decision, and to convey the situation from a different perspective. Your subconscious will not be able to stand up to the facts anymore, and will no longer have excuses to continue to create imaginary obstacles.
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Anticipate possible obstacles and prepare in advance
You’ve probably faced many challenges in your life, so you know yourself and have some sense of your weaknesses. Do your homework. Write down your biggest excuses of all time before embarking on a new project, challenge, or goal. Then ponder and write down what you will answer to yourself when excuses come up.
It is said that it is necessary to know your enemy, because only then can you gain an advantage. So I invite you to discover your greatest excuses of all time, which, as if an anchor thrown ashore, does not allow you to move out of place. We all have our favorite TOP excuses, that always work. Get to know them, make a plan, and throw them away forever.