What’s your excuse?
- Couldn’t stick to my diet plan because the red velvet cake was simply delicious!
- Couldn’t get that blog written because I binge watched Suits on Netflix!
- Couldn’t exercise today as it was raining in the morning!
- Was late to work because the traffic was too much!
Excuses, excuses and more excuses.
Excuses are the bane to achieving anything of substance. We all hear excuses all day — be it the client who didn’t implement a game-changing process, a son who didn’t clean up his room or a colleague who didn’t do the adequate level of research required to crack a deal.
I wonder, when did excuses start being a replacement for the work done? Why isn’t the drop in trust that accompanies excuses isn’t serious enough to prevent excuses in the first place?
Excuses aren’t going to automatically get me a new customer or leave a room all sparkling and clean. In fact, excuses aren’t going to help at all to the one at the receiving end! It might give a temporary boost to the person using it as it provides a ‘temporary respite’ to the task at hand — but doesn’t it make things worse?
How is anyone then better off with using an excuse rather than doing the real work?
It is the easiest thing in the world to provide an excuse, but to own up, and instead work on getting stuff done — that is real courage.
You might argue — a lot of things aren’t under my control, so how can I not have excuses when people have not pulled their weight?
- How would you like a chief surgeon to say these words for a failed operation and shift the blame to his team?
- How would you like a prime minister of a country to shift the blame to his opposition and his cabinet for not delivering on the manifesto?
- How would you like your mother to give you a laundry list of excuses on why there isn’t any food on the table today?
You get the message. This is all about being responsible and self-disciplined. If you have taken responsibility, then excuses fly out of the window because they simply do not exist for an achiever. Despite your best efforts, if things do not work out as planned — that’s still ok. You have lessons learnt and a chance to do it better. But if the problem is with taking the path of least resistance — be prepared to lose the trust someone deposed in you!
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. ― Benjamin Franklin
Providing excuses is like giving up even before you start. Don’t look for excuses, instead look for the numerous ways in which it can be done.
There are some fantastic people out there who make any excuses that we could come up with look like silly excuses from a kid.
One such hero — Lata Kare, ran in a competition to win so that she could buy her husband much needed medicines with the prize money. You are barefooted, this is the first time you are running, you so not have ’appropriate running gear’, your health is not ok, you didn’t actually register before hand and yes, you are more than 60 years old! Does one need more excuses than this?
Here’s more on this lady who defied the odds to participate, run and win the cash prize for treating her husband.
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/01/06/67yearold-marathon-runner_n_8920378.html
