Drop Your Excuses Now!

Excuses are often the death of progress. They are an all-too-common human behavior that significantly hampers personal growth. When you lean into all the reason why somethng won't work or why you are not good enough, you shift your mindset into doubt. Addressing your negative reasons why help shift your mindset for a better outcome in every experience you come across. This insightful conversation dissect why you make excuses, how they affect you, and offer actionable strategies to overcome this negative behavior.

Transcript

All right,

You know me and questions,

And I wanna ask you one today that kickstarts the conversation that I feel is so important to have this week.

That question is,

Why do you do things that act against your own best interest?

I'm gonna let that sit for a second.

All right,

Let me ask you again.

Why,

At times,

Do you do things that don't make sense,

That you know don't work in your favor,

And yet you do them anyway?

If you are shrugging your shoulders,

And you're like,

I have no idea why I do that,

I wanna break that down.

I wanna talk about it,

But not without asking yet another question,

And that question is,

Why do you make excuses?

When you know you need to do something,

When you know that you are being impacted from stress or your cognitive mindset,

Or your emotions,

Or even in society,

Your personal goals,

You know that there are things that you're doing in your decisions that are not working for you,

And yet you make excuses anyway.

Why do you do that?

I know,

You're probably throwing your hands up in the air,

Like,

I really don't know why I do that.

And there's a,

I don't know,

Avalanche of answers to those two questions,

But let's talk about that.

Let's break all of that down this week in our conversations together,

So that we can kind of have a perspective of how we can show up for ourselves in an irrational way that impacts us far greater than we realize.

Also,

To be fair,

Those two questions actually mean the same thing,

So don't hurt yourself trying to figure it out.

Look,

Life can be a complicated dance,

Right?

And one thing is for certain,

Whether it's me or you or someone you know,

Along the way in this dance,

You're going to mess it up,

And two,

You're gonna make an excuse for something,

Because none of us are perfect,

And sometimes we fall short in our thought processes,

In our emotional body,

In our finances,

In our physical health.

Somewhere in our personal behavior,

We make an excuse,

Fall short,

And a lot of times we have a consequence from it,

And when we're faced with decisions and choices and situations,

Sometimes our final decision is to delay the decision.

We make excuses because we don't want to commit to something,

Or we want to leave things open,

Or we're just lazy,

Or we're procrastinating,

Or we don't have the emotional or mental space at the moment to give an answer,

And so by the nature of just humanness,

We make excuses.

We do irrational things in order to keep ourselves safe,

To protect ourselves in certain ways,

And for the most part,

I'm gonna give you something that I really want you to hold on to.

For the most part,

Excuses tend to be the vehicle of short-term satisfaction.

Satisfaction in delaying something.

Satisfaction in not having to make hard choices.

Satisfaction on being able to shift out of hard moments and into something that feels more basic.

So let's talk about that space where we do things that do not support us,

And we make excuses.

When we make excuses,

They're generally tied to three reasons,

Okay?

There are more,

But if we boil everything down,

We're usually talking about three reasons why we make excuses,

Why we can't do something,

Why we won't do something,

Why we are doing something,

Why we're keeping a habit in place,

Why we do something that other people are turning their nose up to,

Whatever it is,

Three things.

Are you ready?

Fear.

It's a big one.

Indecision and failure.

Are all three of these things tied to trauma?

They can be,

But they're not always tied to trauma.

Is there something that has to do with personal responsibility?

The answer is yes.

And when we quit making excuses,

We began to get really focused on how these three things impact us.

Fear,

Indecision,

And responsibility or failure to take responsibility.

Let's break those down for just a moment because I think they're so important.

This is the thing that a lot of times when people are in session with me and I'll say,

What do you want?

And they're like,

I don't know.

I'm like,

I don't know is not an answer because ultimately you have to know in order to move out of the state that you are in,

You have to be able to make a driving decision.

So indecision,

A lot of times is the driving force to excuse.

So let's start with fear.

Let's be honest,

Attempting something new and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone can be overwhelming.

It can cause anxiety.

It can start to bring up all of these little limits that are actually huge limits like non-acceptance,

Abandonment,

Missteps,

Failure,

Not having fair evaluation from those that you care about,

Not having validation.

It's all of these things.

Hiding underneath these beliefs of restriction is fear.

And when we try to evade fear,

Fear gets so much worse.

It gets so much bigger.

It grows and it grows.

The definition of fear really is a lack of safety.

It's an unpleasant emotion caused by a belief that something or someone is dangerous and you're likely to experience a threat or pain.

It's aroused by this unknowing,

The threat,

Whether real or imagined.

It's the fear of being afraid.

It's a lack of safety.

Anytime we're using an excuse,

A lot of times we're doing so because we have a lack of safety in the moment that we're trying to get out of.

Does that make sense?

There's so much more to say about that,

But let's take a sidestep for just a second and let's talk about indecision.

We all have emotions that drive our decisions.

When we don't know what we need,

When we are trying to avoid a lack of safety or avoid pain and bring in pleasure,

Sometimes we cut off our own legs by not making a decision at all.

When we make excuses to deal with our uncertainty,

What we do is we drive the fear factor up,

And so we begin to use all three of these things against ourselves.

And when we're not 100% prepared to do the thing,

We actually give ourselves the excuse,

The ability to take a sidestep out of our lives,

Which then throws us into this state of perfectionism where we didn't make a decision.

We want things to be a certain way.

It has to be a certain way.

If it's not a certain way,

It's a failure,

And we just sit.

In order to move through life,

It means that we have to take responsibility.

We have to do the thing.

In order to feel our best mentally,

In order to feel ourselves emotionally,

Physically,

Financially,

Even spiritually,

Our five masters,

We have to make a decision.

The more excuses we make,

The harder it is to get out of procrastination,

The harder it is to move at all,

And we stay in the cycle of basic excuse-making because it seems easier even though it's not.

Now,

Let's talk about failure to take responsibility.

Those who make excuses often come off as uninspired,

Indifferent,

Or even difficult.

They give excuses for every little thing.

I will call you out on this so fast.

What excuse are you making?

Why are you making the excuse?

What is your choice?

That is something that literally,

It unnerves me,

Right?

Why make an excuse?

Why not do the hard work in the moment to justify an action,

To create a plan,

To not worsen your situation?

When you don't take responsibility for any given situation and you push it aside,

You live in a cycle of unhappiness.

You love to use the words,

I am stuck.

Are you?

I don't think so.

I think you're failing to take responsibility for action.

Not saying that moments that come into your awareness are your responsibility,

Because sometimes they're just not.

But the responsibility falls in your lap to do something about it,

Right?

So where's your responsibility?

So people who make excuses lean into fear,

They are indecisive,

And they fail to take responsibility.

Is that 100%,

100% of the time?

No,

That's not fair to say.

Does it happen more often than not?

Yeah,

It does.

Do people who make excuses and lean into fear,

Indecision,

And fail to take responsibility play the victim card a lot?

Yeah,

You do.

Can it be changed?

Yes.

Let's talk about the consequences of excuses first.

Again,

As I said,

Everyone has an excuse time in their lives and it can happen on any facet of our lives.

However,

I want you to know that when we make excuses,

We tend to borrow trouble.

We tend to create trouble.

This is especially true for people who have a lot of trauma,

Who like to be overstimulated in order to feel something.

What they will often do is manipulate their emotions and the emotions of others in order to borrow trouble and create something that allows them to feel.

We tend to shift blame to others.

We look at life as being unfair.

We try to mitigate our personal responsibility.

We try to take less impact on the way that we show up and it creates a negative where positives could exist.

These consequences don't always result in like long-term negativity or long-term things,

But when we do this over and over and over again,

They do tend to paralyze us in our lives.

And if we want to overcome our excuse making and doing things that don't support us,

We have to look at why.

So I'm going to give you some questions that you should ask yourself if you know that you are one that makes excuses.

And the first one is,

What excuses do I tend to make?

Can I pinpoint where I make excuses?

You know,

Is it personally?

Is it in my job?

Is it in my family?

Is it taking care of my emotions,

My mental health,

My way of showing up,

My behavior?

What is it?

Why do I make excuses?

What area?

What are the reasons I don't accept who I am?

This is a big one because it's avoidance.

I don't take personal responsibility.

So therefore,

There must be something that I'm uncomfortable with.

What about me am I not willing to see?

And when you have that information,

List the consequences for making those excuses.

How are these things preventing me from advancing in my life?

How are they impacting other people in my life?

I'm not asking you to make changes for those people.

What I want you to do is understand that your behavior has an impact.

So who are you impacting with the excuse making?

And how do these excuses hinder my ability to become the person I keep saying I want to be?

Now,

Here is a spoiler alert.

I'm still working on being the person I wanna be.

That is a lifelong,

Forward-thinking,

Deeply intentional action.

I want you to always be working towards that person you wanna be because that person is going to change depending on what's happening in your life.

So how are these excuses hindering me from getting to the next level?

You know,

Danielle 3.

0,

Or four,

17,

Or 112.

I don't care what it is.

What is hindering you from getting to that next place?

So often we use our past to hold us,

To wrap us up in the moment,

And say things like,

You know what?

This is gonna be really hard.

And so I know that no matter what I do,

Things always tend to be the same.

And if it's always gonna be the same,

Why do I have to put so much thought into it?

It's just not worth it.

And I understand the thought,

I really do.

But is it necessary?

Is it 100% necessary?

The answer is no.

There's always going to be something else.

So we know the three factors that often are tied to excuse-making.

Those simple questions help you kind of recognize where you're making those excuses.

And you know that some of the consequences of making excuses would be that you don't get the things done that you wanna get done,

That you don't have good maybe physical health or emotional health or spiritual health,

Whatever it might be,

That you keep yourself on the sidelines of your life,

That you destroy relationships,

You feel stuck,

You do things that do not work in your favor,

Back to the question of why do I do things that are irrational?

Because I'm unwilling to take my life into my own hands.

I'm unwilling to show up in a way that drills down and says these excuses are hindering me.

And while I may fall into unknown territory,

I'm still willing to blindly go.

I have a little sign on my desk that's been there for,

My gosh guys,

Probably 15 years.

It's something that I absolutely love.

It's a little metal sign that says,

Faith is going blindly into a path that you can't see.

I don't know who wrote that,

But it's such brilliance in writing.

I want you to think about that because the opposite of it is stuck,

Is sitting,

Is the excuse.

If you desire any kind of fulfillment in your life,

You have to blindly lead yourself into a period of discomfort,

Embark into the unknown,

Be willing to have unexpected outcomes,

To be uncomfortable,

To keep in mind that growth by definition means to increase.

It means the process of developing,

Of maturing,

Of growing.

The only way we do that is through eradicating the excuses.

So how do we stop doing the things that are counter to our lives?

How do we stop saying,

I don't know?

How do we stop ourselves from fully sitting in our emotions?

How do we stop ourselves from not taking real,

True,

Hard looks at the things that disrupt us?

How do we stop ourselves from physically putting ourselves on the side?

How do we stop stopping our growth?

We look at a few techniques that help us stop the excuses.

If you want fulfillment,

You have to do the thing,

Right?

The first is take responsibility.

Those questions that I just mentioned to you help you get into that space.

Let me give them to you again.

What are the excuses I tend to make?

Why do I make these excuses?

What are the reasons that I do not accept where I am or who I am?

How are these excuses preventing me from advancing?

How are they impacting other people?

And how does this take away or hinder my ability to be who I say I want to be?

You want new outcomes.

You have to do the thing.

If you desire to stop making excuses,

The first thing,

Like I just said,

Is to realize that you have to take responsibility.

Develop willpower in taking the responsibility.

My son has started saying something.

I'm gonna leave out the word that he probably shouldn't say,

But he's now saying,

I'm sorry,

I screwed up.

And then he makes the course correction.

It's this taking accountability that is outward.

It's also internal.

I'm recognizing that I have messed this thing up and I have to change courses.

It's really that simple.

It is a relentless practice,

Though,

Right?

You could be saying that a million times a day,

I screwed up,

But it's different than saying,

Well,

I didn't have time to do X,

Y,

And Z.

I didn't want to do that thing.

I felt like if I did that,

I couldn't do what I really wanted to do over here.

Whatever the excuse is,

It allows you to recognize that I need to create a different path in this space.

Taking responsibility is the very first way to stop making excuses,

By stop doing the thing that really circumvents your experience.

The next one is self-control.

Impulsivity is a significant downer to your intentions and your goals.

Very important to hear what I'm saying.

When you are impulsive with your decisions and you are not firm and thinking ahead in your behaviors,

You are always going to find a space of being tempted to make excuses.

Instead of relying on your willpower,

Your self-control,

You are much more tempted to do whatever because it seems easiest.

Remember that easy isn't always easy in the long run.

Spontaneity is different than impulsivity.

So say something comes along and all of a sudden you have a new opportunity,

That is spontaneity.

Impulsivity is moving from space to space and not really doing what you need to do.

It's a bad behavior that goes back to what I said earlier,

That you are trying to gain short-term satisfaction.

An excellent way to practice getting out of the excuse-making is to stay committed to your commitments.

Reward yourself for your progress.

Don't get ahead of yourself and move from one thing to the other without fully seeing it through.

In order to not make excuses,

Be mindful of what you're doing.

Develop self-control.

Choose to put down these obligations that you need to adhere to,

Make a list of it,

Do whatever you need to,

Check them off,

And then reward yourself for the progress.

I really would love to go to the concert with you.

I need to get through X,

Y,

And Z,

And if I can,

Then oh my goodness,

I am so delighted to go.

It's those kind of things,

Because if the short-term gratification causes more problems,

You're borrowing trouble and you're asking for more work.

What do you need?

Develop the self-control.

Then look at the procrastination.

A lot of times procrastination is so much deeper than what we even think.

A lot of times we are emotionally tired.

We have a lot of trauma that we are not paying attention to.

We have a lot of things that need to be looked at and examined,

And we are just choosing to not do those things.

Procrastination is a really big telltale sign that we're suffering from analysis paralysis.

We are stuck in the uncertainty.

We have dreams,

But we're not taking conscious action.

Why?

Ask yourself,

Why am I holding myself back?

If you want to have a life of success,

You have to be intentional with your actions.

If you suffer from that analysis paralysis and making excuses,

Again,

We ask ourselves why,

But we're also looking for the simple things that need to occur in order to move forward.

What is the small thing that would make me feel better?

What is the small thing that would allow me to feel like I could have a moment that is satisfying and good and makes sense?

Getting to the root of your procrastination changes so much.

We do that by tracking our behavior.

This is another method.

You can facilitate habit formation by tracking your behavior,

By looking at what you're avoiding,

By looking at what you're doing.

When you look at your default settings in your brain,

Those habits in which you tend to go to are these things that work for you.

When you monitor your behavior,

You can avoid falling short.

You can make sure that you follow through and you make sure that you celebrate your successes so that you can hold yourself accountable.

When you do the irrational thing,

When you make the excuse,

You default back to the pattern that doesn't work for you.

I was with a couple recently and they were talking about falling back into patterns because they had taken a break from therapy.

This is very normal.

I see it all the time.

I often warn couples of this.

Let's see each other once a month just to kind of check in because I'm your accountability partner.

They raw dog it.

They go for it on their own.

And they're like,

Sure,

No,

I got this.

I'm like,

Okay,

I'll see you shortly because you're not really ready yet.

And they come back and they're like,

You know what?

We just went right back to where we were.

There was no accountability.

I was just doing the thing that I normally do.

And I went back to the default setting.

Your brain's gonna do that.

It looks for the easiest way to conserve energy.

And default is easy.

I don't have to think about it.

This is just what I do.

And when I do that,

I make the excuse not to do something else.

So track the behavior.

What's getting in my way?

What's not working?

What is working?

Get to a space that you can hold yourself accountable.

And no,

It's okay to fail.

It is,

It's absolutely okay.

You can shift back,

But what do you need to shift back to?

What are we doing?

Track your behavior.

Write it down.

Make sure that you're staying focused.

Have an accountability partner,

Whatever that looks like,

But track the behavior.

The next thing is to alter your perspective.

That is the one thing that I would say I probably do most as a therapist,

Is to help people alter their perspective.

When they see something and they say,

Well,

That's just the way it's always been.

I'm like,

Stop for just a second.

That's fine if that's the way it's always been.

Doesn't mean that there's not another flip side to it.

When we switch our perspectives,

We see problems as opportunities,

Not obstacles.

And we begin to have an alternate path to every situation.

And that's what you need to do the minute you hear an excuse.

The excuse is,

I don't want to work out because I'm too tired.

Well,

Does the workout provide more energy?

Yes.

Are you going to be tired anyway?

Yes.

Or,

Opposite,

I have to go work out even though I'm exhausted.

Is the workout going to provide the ability to rest after or are you going to be too amped?

What do you need in the moment?

Shift the perspective.

That's how we stop the excuse.

From there,

Let's try exercising personal boundaries and giving ourselves a definition of what enough is.

What is enough?

People who make excuses likely have an overarching narrative about their inadequacy,

About the things that they can't do,

The things that they experienced.

When that happens,

They allow this lack of self-confidence,

The ability to show up,

All of these things to be the leader.

And those negative behaviors become excuses.

I can't.

I don't know how.

I'm not sure.

And those are the places that we begin to identify.

What's the excuse?

It's that.

It's the I can't.

I won't.

I'm not sure how.

These are the things that we have to begin to counter with perhaps a new skillset or a new thought process or a new feeling understanding,

But exercising where I'm falling short.

There's also another element to all of that that I want to bring up because it's where I see people use the word stuck the most and it's overcoming the middle problem.

As we change our behaviors,

As we stop making excuses,

The beginning is simple,

Right?

We know where we're starting.

It's the middle that we have trouble with.

We tend to slack off in the middle because we're trying to get to an end goal that may take longer than we really had anticipated.

And that's why when I've talked about goals,

I talk about going from the end and then moving all the way back to the first part of your goal and making sure that you have trackable actions all the way through.

We want to shorten the middles.

We want to have sub goals.

We want to have a tendency to lean all the way in instead of cut corners and try to reduce the middle part.

We have to overcome the middle problem when we stop making excuses because the middle is often where we,

One,

Stop,

Two,

We get fatigued,

Three,

We make the most excuses,

And four,

We just give up completely.

If we can do all of those things,

Right?

Where we alter our perception,

We overcome the middle,

We track our behaviors,

We really squash procrastination,

We take time to develop our self-control by actually doing the thing,

By making progress,

We can begin to act unconditionally,

Which is our last piece to all of this,

Right?

Is that we have to act unconditionally if we desire to transcend where we are right now.

To do this,

We have to learn to love ourselves and to do things without just the full expectation of everything's going to work in our favor 100% of the time.

It does,

It really does,

But it's a matter of are you really focused and geared into a very specific outcome?

If you are,

You may feel like that didn't go in your favor because the outcome didn't unfold the way that you had expected it to.

You have to learn that acting unconditionally allows you to show up no matter what takes place.

When we are self-affirming and we affirm our efforts,

We lead ourselves into a better focused outcome,

No matter what the outcome is.

Some excuses may appear harmless,

Right?

Well,

They're not that big of a deal,

But in reality,

The consequence of making excuses drives us away from our best self,

Away from our best life.

It puts us into victim mode.

It has us falling back into old habits and aptitudes instead of in growth and improvement.

If you desire to live a certain life,

You have to get so intentional.

You have to not get comfortable.

You have to take away the excuses,

Take them off the table and do what is best for you.

That may mean that you have to face your fear.

It may mean that you have to push through discomfort.

It may mean that you have to find a solution that's best for you,

Even if it doesn't feel the best.

Making excuses is tough.

It is really hard,

But you know what?

They are toxic in your life.

So you have to do what you need to do so that you don't cancel your life plans.

Let me say that again.

Excuses are cancellations of your life's plans.

Can you feel that?

Can you feel how deep that resonates?

My excuse today is the cancellation of my plan,

Of my life's plan,

Of what is important to me.

I am canceling it.

I'm not willing to do that.

And once that soaks in for you,

I hope that you won't do it either.

It's okay to be afraid.

It's okay to push yourself out of a box.

It's okay to shift gears,

But it's also okay to be worthy,

To take a risk,

To do what you need to so that you don't cancel what means the most to you.

Showing up,

Living outside the box,

Being willing to move forward.

That's what it's all about.

That is how you get your life together.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode,

Which originally aired on the Get Your Life Together Girl podcast.

Please take the time to review this conversation and follow me here on Insight Timer for more courses,

Meditations,

And additional conversations.

Until next time,

Be kind to yourself and others.