Your Life is Either in a State of Growth or State of Decay
And how you can leverage excuses to grow
In the world we live in, it’s easier for you to be influenced by our society more than ever.
When you quest social media, binge watch tv, or spend time with people, everything around you that you call life begins to change depending on the perspective you look at it with.
One of those influences creates something even worse that does us more damage than good. With more access and connections to being more successful in our daily lives, it seems we have become more complacent.
If you’re anything like me and I’m pretty sure you are, you’ve been there too. You’ve faced challenges in your life. Having to confront life in ways that seem inescapable. Where it feels like solutions don’t exist. And we cling to every excuse in the book to help justify to ourselves why it’s okay to keep doing the thing we’re doing. Anything to avoid the next challenge.
I know the feeling…
It’s what people like to call reasons. It’s what successful people call “excuses.”
A common fact:
It takes the same conscious effort to find reasons to stay exactly where you’re at as it does taking action upon your goals. For this reason, the vast population of our world finds comfort in complacency.
It’s not harder to do the opposite thing in your mind, but it will require a shift in your direction. Like going from drive to reverse in your car.
Excuses are easy.
They roam the earth. And they only make themselves present when someone needs to put a reason between them and what will ultimately put them closer to a goal or desire.
And the fact is they exist everywhere, and more excuses are manufactured every single day when someone is challenged to do something good for themselves they haven’t done yet. They are born in our minds.
Creating an excuse involves taking a circumstance you’re in and putting it before yourself so that you can avoid taking action upon a goal. That’s a lot tougher than it sounds, but it gets more comfortable when it’s practiced consistently. That’s why a lot of people are good at it. I am an ex-master of excuses. But I knew someone that stayed a master.
Allow me to illustrate.
I once had a super close friend who I would continuously nag to join the gym with me. I knew he wanted to because his goal was to lose weight in the summertime so he could be more comfortable being shirtless. Well, I never heard so many excuses come out of someone’s mouth than I did from him. It was either a time thing, blaming an injury from a long time ago, or because his girlfriend wanted to spend time with him. She was even upset he didn’t follow through on his commitments to his health.
And before he moved away after his breakup, it had been a while before we reunited once again. We had food and talked. He had grown more substantial in size and said to me he had given up on getting fit.
As his friend, it killed me to hear those words come out of his mouth. I’ve always wanted people around me to become better so we could nurture a healthy relationship and be successful. However, I could tell his ambitions had died like a flower without water forever.
Whatever we want to accomplish in our lives is going to be challenging.
But that’s the best part.
Why?
We come out the other end of the challenge, improved and refined. In this, we grow ourselves and our ability to reach the goals we’ve set.
By eliminating excuses, we can start finding reasons to take action on our goals.
Remember that explanations want to stand in your way. Its what they’re good at. But if you’re the creator of the alibi, then you can surely get rid of it so you can start living the life you truly want. Not the one you push away.
We’re either in a state of growth or in a state of decay. One decision can invite decay. Excuses make it permanent.
I hope this helps.
Christian
