Let’s look at how to stop making excuses so you can start learning from past mistakes, take responsibility and start succeeding. **and make sure you stick around till the end because I’ll also quickly share with you my favourite life changing piece of advice for crushing excuses forever.
Hey, it’s Raymond Burton here from SuccessDisciplines.com where we help you upgrade your lifestyle from the inside out.
If you’re new here, make sure you click that Subscribe button, and all the links to everything we mention in this video, you can find linked in the description box below.
So let’s jump into it.
What follows are my takeaways in a condensed version of the chapter on excuses from The Magic Of Thinking Big by David Schwartz as well as other books which I will link to in the resources box below.
If you go deep into your study of people, you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a success crushing thought handicap called excuses. Every failure has this thought handicap in its advanced form and most average people have at least a mild case of it.
Crush Excuses And Upgrade Your Life
I discovered that excuses explain the difference between the person who is going places and the person who is barely holding their own. Crush excuses, upgrade your life.
I found that the more successful the individual, the less inclined they are to make excuses.
But the person who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywhere always has a sad sack full of reasons to explain why.
People with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they arent.
However all the excuses made by the mediocre person could be, but aren’t made, by the successful person.
People that find a good excuse why they are not succeeding usually live by that excuse for a long time. They use this excuse when they talk to themselves and others as to why they are not making progress in life.
And each time the person makes the excuse, the excuse is imbedded deeper within the subconsciousness. This is because thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger over time with
repetition. At first the person knows their excuses are more or less a lie. But the more frequently they repeat it, the more convinced they become that it is completely true. They believe that the excuse, is the real reason they are not success they should be.
Stop Making Excuses – Start Solving Problems
In your individual program of thinking yourself to success, you must bulletproof yourself against excuses.
Excuses appear in a wide variety of forms, but the most common are health excuses, intelligence excuses, age excuses, and luck excuses. Here’s how we can protect ourselves from these four common lies.
Fixing The Habit Of Health Excuses
Health excuses range all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good,” to the more specific “Ive got such-and-such wrong with me.” My favourite excuse is, “I’m too tired.”
“Bad” health, in a thousand different forms, is used as a excuse for failing to do what a person wants to do, failing to accept greater responsibilities, failing to make more money, failing to achieve success.
Millions of people make health excuses but it’s not a legitimate excuse. Think for a moment of all the highly successful people you know who could-but who don’t-use health as an excuse.
The perfect specimen of adult life is non-existent. There is something physically wrong with almost everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excuses but success-thinking people do not.
If you think something is wrong with you, get a couple medical opinions. If all 4 opinions agree, then so be it. Do what you can despite the condition. You may not be able to do one thing, so pivot and succeed at another.
Worry causes much trouble. Worrying about potential or legitimate illness can sometimes make things even worse. Learning to deal with and control your emotions is a major skill set worth it’s own study and practice.
I recommend you read Dr. Schindlers great book, How to Live 365 Days a Year. Dr. Schindler. The direct link is in the resource box below. Dr. Schindler shows in this book that three out of every four hospital beds are occupied by people who have Emotionally Induced Illness. In other words, worry.
Imagine, three out of four people who are sick right now would be well if they had learned how to handle their emotions. Read Dr. Schindler’s book and develop your program for emotional management.
I used to worry about death a lot. But then I realized the person that spends time worrying about dying isn’t truly living. Each thought of dying is a stolen moment from life.
There are two ways of meeting health problems. The first group isn’t even sure they have anything organically wrong with them. They’re worried, depressed, on the road to defeat, wanting somebody to second the motion that they cant go forward.
A lack of excuses means no justification for failure. If nothing is wrong with you… why aren’t you successful? That’s something most people don’t want to acknowledge.
The second group, despite undergoing difficult operations, or overwhelming handicaps, are still optimistic, eager to do something. They are willing to exert effort in the hope of a positive outcome despite the reality they live in.
The difference in thought and attitude towards opposition and challenge will change your future.
Four Ways To Stop Making Health Excuses
First, refuse to talk about vour health. The more you talk about an ailment, even the common cold, the worse it seems to get. Talking talking about bad health is like putting fertilizer on weeds. Besides, talking about your health is a bad habit. It bores people. It makes one appear self-centered and old maidish.
Success-minded people defeat the natural tendency to talk about their “bad health.” Maybe you get a little sympathy but you wont get respect or loyalty. Complainers appear weak.
Second, refuse to worry about your health once you’ve taken appropriate medical steps for discovery and treatment if required.
Third, be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is.There’s an old saying worth repeating often: “I felt sorry for myself because I had ragged shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
Instead of complaining about “not feeling good,” it’s far better to be glad you are as healthy as you are. Just being grateful for the health you have is powerful vaccination against developing new aches, pains and real illness.
Fourth, remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.” Life is yours to enjoy. Don’t waste it. Don’t pass up living by thinking yourself into a hospital bed.
Stop Making Excuses About Your Intelligence
Now lets talk about not being smart enough…
They say you have to be smart to succeed. It’s not true. A lot of people use a lack of intelligence as an excuse.
Unlike most other types of excuses, people who love this excuse suffer in silence.
Not many people will admit openly that they think they lack adequate intelligence. Rather, they feel it deep down inside.
Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence
1. We underestimate our own brain power, and
2. We overestimate other people’s brain power.
Because of these two errors many people sell themselves short. They fail to tackle challenging situations because it “takes a brains.”
But then along comes the person who isn’t concerned about intelligence and claims the prize.
What really matters is not how much intelligence you have, but how you use what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
In other words, you do not need a lightning fast mind to be good at anything. Nor do you need a miraculous memory, nor is it necessary that you get very high grades in school. The only point that counts is that you have a high degree of interest in the subject.
Interest, enthusiasm, is the critical factor!
With a positive, optimistic, and cooperative attitude, a person with an IQ of 100 will earn more money, win more respect, and achieve more success than a negative, pessimistic, uncooperative individual with an IQ of 120.
Just enough interest to stick with something-a chore, task, project until it’s completed, pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.
For, stickability is 95 percent of ability.
Why some brilliant people are failures…
The reason some brilliant people are failures is because they look for why things won’t succeed, instead of why they might.
Remember, the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have. Not even a Ph.D. degree can override this basic success principle!
Get your degree in “human” engineering and you’ll get further than most. Be 100 per cent positive. Inspire others when they feel low. Be enthusiastic, generate enthusiasm in others. Understand people, and really see what makes them tick… and they will help you succeed.
Negative thinking explains why the door to top-flight executive positions are closed to many who should seize the opportunity. Sour, negative, pessimistic, depreciating attitudes rather than insufficient intelligence hold back thousands of potential success stories.
The top 25 per cent of the insurance agents sell over 75 per cent of the insurance while the bottom 25 per cent of the agents sold only 5 per cent of total volume.
The difference between the very successful and the very unsuccessful reduces to differences in attitudes. It’s a difference in thought management. Top achievers worry less are more enthusiastic. They have a sincere liking for people they interact with.
Maybe you can’t change the amount of native intelligence you have, but you can certainly change the way you use what you have.
What bosses want are people who can solve problems, who can think up ideas. People who can dream and then develop the dream into a practical application; an idea man can make money.
How To Stop Making Excuses About Your Intelligence
Three easy ways to stop intelligence excuses are:
1. Never underestimate your own intelligence and never overestimate the intelligence of others. Don’t sell yourself short. Concentrate on your assets. Discover your superior talents.
Remember, it’s not how many brains you’ve got that matters. Its how you use your brains that counts. Manage your brains instead of worrying about how much 1Q you’ve got.
2. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.” At work and at home practice positive attitudes. See the reasons why you can do it, not the reasons why you can’t. Develop an “I’m winning” attitude. Put your intelligence to creative positive use. Use it to find ways to win, not to prove you will lose.
3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop ideas, to find new and better ways to do things.
Stop Using Age As An Excuse
Some people never feel the right age. It’s either, “Im too old” or “Im too young.”
You’ve heard hundreds of people of all ages explain their mediocre performance in life something like this: “I’m too old (or too young) to break in now. I can’t do what I want to do or am capable of doing because of my age.
Really, it’s surprising how few people feel they are “just right” age-wise. And it’s unfortunate. This excuse has closed the door of real opportunity to thousands of individuals. They think their age
is wrong, so they don’t even bother to try.
HOW TO HANDLE AGE EXCUSES
The simple way to stop making age excuses is to look at things this way…
For those that think they are too old: A person is most productive between 20 and 70. At 40 years old, you’re primed with life experience to leverage it into something else… or to start fresh with 30+ years to go. There are many stories of people that have done just such a thing.
For those that think they are too young: When is a person too young? Youth is a liability only when the youth thinks it is. You often hear that certain jobs require “considerable” physical maturity, That you’ve either got to have grey hair or not any hair at all in order to gain an investors confidence is plain nonsense. What really matters is how well you know your job. lf you know your job and understand people you’re sufficiently mature to handle it.
Age has no real relation to ability, unless you convince yourself that years alone will give you the stuff you need to make your mark.
Many young people feel that they are being held back because of their youth. Now it is true that another person in an organization who is insecure and job-scared may try to block your way forward, using age or some other reason.
But the people who really count in the company will not. They will give you as much responsibility as they feel you can handle well. Demonstrate that you have ability and positive attitudes and your youthfulness will be considered an advantage.
Form now on, look at your present age positively. No matter what age you are, knowing your job and how to handle people trumps your age.
The Luck Excuse – So and So was lucky…. I am unlucky…
There is no such thing as a true accident. What we call an accident is the result of human or mechanical failure, or a combination of both.
There is a cause for everything. Some of those causes we can control and some not. But nothing happens without a cause. There is nothing accidental about the weather outside today. It is the result of specific causes. And there is no reason to believe that human affairs are an exception.
Yet hardly a day passes that you do not hear someone blame his problems on “bad” luck. And it’s a rare day that you do not hear someone attribute another person’s success to “good luck.
The truth is that people who rise to the top in any occupation, get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work.
So accept the law of cause and effect. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “good luck.” You’ll find not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking preceded their good fortune.
Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “bad luck.” You’ll discover certain specific reasons. Mr. Success receives a setback; they learn and profit. But when Mr. Mediocre loses, they fail to learn. Nobody becomes successful simply through luck.
So don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success or get luck to favour you. Master those principles that produce success. Don’t count on luck for promotions, victories or any of the good things in life. Just concentrate on developing those qualities in yourself that will make you a winner.
Learn and acquire the skills that produce the results. Then put yourself into the position where these talents will get noticed and rewarded.
The Takeaway Lesson
Here’s the take away lesson: People with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t. Then they bank these excuses to use for future conversations with themselves and others. It makes them feel comfortable with never accomplishing their goals and dreams.
Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover this: all the excuses made by the mediocre person could be but aren’t made by the successful person. The successful person learns lessons from the same situations for which the unsuccessful person makes excuses. The successful person learns, grows, adapts, and overcomes and becomes better. Over time, like pennies in a jar, their worth and ability grows.
Now for my final piece of advice that will crush any excuse forever. It’s from Brian Tracy.
“No more excuses! Do it or don’t do it but don’t make excuses. Stop using your incredible brain to think up elaborate rationalizations and justifications for not taking action. Do something. Do anything. Get on with it! Repeat to yourself: `If it’s to be, it’s up to me!’ Losers make excuses; winners make progress. Now, how can you tell if your favorite excuse is valid or not? It’s simple. Look around and ask, `Is there anyone else who has my same excuse who is successful anyway?’ When you ask this question, if you are honest, you will have to admit that there are thousands and even millions of people who have had it far worse than you have who have gone on to do wonderful things with their lives. And what thousands and millions of others have done, you can do as well–if you try.”
~ Brian Tracy from No Excuses!
In the end, you crush excuses by reframing your reality. For example, you are not a FAILURE who lost a business, had to start over, or who has a blown out knee. You are an ALLSTAR who survived all those things and are still working towards success.
Adapt and Overcome.
Raymond Burton
RESOURCES:
Dr. Schindlers great book, How to Live 365 Days a Year
Brian Tracy’s book No Excuses!
The Magic Of Thinking Big by David Schwartz