Excuses are like heavy sandbags tied to your ankles. They will weigh you down overtime and will keep you from achieving the goals you want to reach. This is because the phrases that you use to overcompensate for your faults (failing to study for a test or being late to work) give you a false sense of security rather than providing you with the personal guilt you need to feel to do better next time. Excuses keep you rocking in limbo. They keep you landlocked into a state of “okayness”, a state in which you are unwilling to accept the lessons you need to become a better person tomorrow.
Jack Canfield, the author of the best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soul says, “To achieve major success in life — to achieve those things that are most important to you — you must assume 100% responsibility for your life. Nothing less will do.”
That’s right. You are 100% responsible for the course of your life. Only you have the ability to alter the path that you’ve walked down and where you want to go. If you live by this principle, then excuses cannot exist in your life. This is because excuses only seek to sabotage your self-control.
By blaming your alarm clock as the reason why you arrived late to work today, you allow external factors to now have an impact over the course of your life. You have lessened control over your destiny and you helplessly emanate to the world that you are not here to create your destiny and simply don’t care to be. When we deflect blame to other people or things to explain failed situations, we subconsciously allow our minds to believe that we have no means or power over creating better lives for ourselves. We begin to believe that our lives are predestined to be mediocre and that external factors (where we come from, who we meet, what professors we have, how bitchy our bosses are) define and direct our paths.
This doesn’t mean that life doesn’t happen. It happens all the times. Things we never think could occur happen.
But even so, when you live by the principle that you are fully in control of your life, you are able to see how certain situations come to be.
But things that we do have control over — when we arrive to work, what we put in our bodies, whether we work out, getting a raise — can only be achieved if we are willing to give up excuses in life. We must learn to accept both the joy and pain of our successes and failures, learning from all situations throughout life, in order to see progress. If you tell yourself that you’re going to start dieting tomorrow and eat a large piece of cake over the course of the next four days, it’s not your co-workers fault for bringing in treats to the office that caused you to fail at your personal goal. The only person you have to blame is yourself for putting those slices in your mouth. Learn to take responsibility, get mad at yourself, hear the lesson, and move on. Do better tomorrow than you did yesterday.
People who use excuses seldom succeed. If you want to begin to see change happen in your life you have to be ready to kick those dirty and half-hearted “justifications” out the window. There is no need to make excuses for your life when you live knowing that you are in total control.
Because you are in total control and deserve the life of your dreams.
