• Are you ready with an excuse at the drop of a hat?
• Do you master the art & craft of making excuses?

Then you may land in a soup someday!

Since my school days, I have been noticing that some children were experts at making excuses. Those were the days of “innocent excuses” which teachers also knew about along with parents. Many times, I noticed that parents encouraged their children to make excuses in school. So, when you start learning the ropes at that age, you will be a master when you grow up. When making excuses becomes your second nature then it starts affecting your life and those around you. It creates disturbance in your family, social, and professional lives. You no longer can be counted as trustworthy or dependable. You start losing out on life…

As quoted by Benjamin Franklin, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

When you are a child, making excuses is taken in good spirits but when you grow up, it starts creating trouble for you. So, what is the prime factor in making excuses?

Making excuses can almost always be traced back to one emotion: fear. Fear can come in many forms. Perhaps you make excuses about going after your dreams because you are afraid of failure. You may make excuses about your weight or your health because of self-doubt and lack of confidence.

Is making excuses the right thing to do?

When we shift the blame, we avoid responsibility for a failure, and we also avoid the responsibility for learning from that failure. Excuses stunt our growth. When we make excuses, we tend to convince ourselves that we could not have changed the outcome, and therefore have no need to adapt for the future. Maybe this is one way of avoiding failure but what if you met success? You missed out on a wonderful opportunity. This way life becomes a series of missed opportunities.

As I mentioned above, if you are known as good for making excuses, then you are seldom good for anything else. Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that is the day you start to the top.

Let us understand the fine difference between “making excuses” and “providing explanations.” If you are explaining, you are assuming responsibility and facing the consequences. In addition, with an explanation and clarity you can analyze, and by analyzing you can understand and learn. If you are making an excuse, you are not accepting responsibility and not facing the consequences. You are looking for an easy “way out”. Hence, you need to be truthful to yourself before jumping to making excuses.

If you look at the larger picture, excuses are a way to justify not pursuing what you want in life. You are never going to get what you want until you stop telling yourself why you cannot and start creating a life that proves that you can.

Hope you have heard about this remarkable man – Nick Vujicic. He was born without arms and legs. After a childhood of bullying and thoughts of suicide, he is now one of the best motivational speakers in the world! He is so incredible, all of us respect him.

According to him:
You may have arms and legs but unless you know 3 things…

• Who are you, and what your value is?
  What is your purpose here in life?
  What is your destiny?

If you do not know the answers to ANY of those 3 questions, you are more disabled than I.”

Till now, we have analysed people who are experts in making excuses for other people, which is one thing, but making excuses for yourself is another thing. It is destructive. Many people do it so often that it becomes a habitual response. But have you ever thought about the massive negative effects it has on you? When you make excuses for yourself, you are saying to yourself that you do not have the willpower, self-respect, or self-worth, and you are letting your anxiety and fears dictate your life. You are also saying that you choose to give up and not do what it takes to find a way to make it happen for yourself –doing so makes it impossible for you to have absolute confidence.

Now, the most important question, how does making excuses affect you? You will say, it does not affect me, it affects another person.

Making excuses greatly affects your confidence and your self-esteem. This is a self-sabotage. It is a negative behaviour that sabotages your abilities, performance, and motivation. It is a distraction and avoidance behaviour that prevents you from getting what you want.

If you want something, you find a way.
If you do not feel worthy of it, you make an excuse.

This way making excuses greatly affects your confidence and your self-esteem.

To avoid being in such a situation, stop making excuses, it is hard in the beginning but works well in the long run.

You will certainly be happyHo.