My Dad used to say: “Excuses are like assholes; everyone has one and they all stink.” You’ve probably heard something similar from a paternal figure in your life.
I have my own cute little saying about excuses: “Excuses are like excuses: they all fucking suck so don’t gimme that bullshit.” I’ve been told it lacks a certain rhetorical je ne sais quoi, but you get the idea.
People holding themselves back with silly excuses is nothing new under the sun. Pick up any self-help book written in the last thirty years and you’re bound to find a chapter on excuses or “limiting beliefs” or some such thing.
So if the information has been out there for so long, seemingly easily discoverable by the people who need it, why is it still a problem? The answer: we are a nation of excuseaholics. We have lost the ability to appropriately distinguish between a valid reason and an excuse.
There are appropriate times and places to drink alcohol in, and appropriate quantities in which to drink it. But an alcoholic cannot make this distinction. Therefore as part of every alcoholic recovery program, alcoholics are prohibited from drinking anything, ever. The end result is that they miss out on drinking during times in which drinking is appropriate and in appropriate quantities–the trade-off is that they never end up binge drinking and get tokeep their liver.
Just as an alocholic cannot be trusted to determine what/when/how much drinking is appropriate, an excuseahloic cannot tell the difference between an appropriate reason for not doing something he knows he should and a bullshit excuse.
So, as the alcoholic is prohibited all alcohol forever, so must the excuseaholic be prohibited all excuses forever.
What’s that you say? You were planning on going out tonight but you didn’t have time to iron your shirt? Your car broke down? Your mother was eaten by a panda? Too bad. You’re going.
At the beginning of the week, figure out your work/school commitments, your errands, etc and put it all on a calendar. Then put down time to do the things you know you should do (go out and meet people, exercise, write your novel, whatever). Now that you’ve already accounted for all of the things you have to do and when the time comes to do the things you should do, you are confident you have no legitimate reason to procrastinate.
You now have no more excuses to make excuses. So knock it off and go have fun.
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