We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
- Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Everyone makes excuses.
Sometimes they’re so good we almost believe them ourselves.
Sometimes they may even be true.
But they’re still just excuses.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
- Benjamin Franklin
Image: Denise Carbonell
That saying is as old as the hills, and so is the wisdom it contains.
If you’ve messed up then accept that and take responsibility for it. Make amends and then figure out how to avoid doing it again.
By blaming your tools you’re actually holding yourself back. You are lying to yourself. You’re telling yourself that you haven’t done anything wrong and that there isn’t anything you need to learn.
At the end of the day, the real loser in this will be YOU.
You won’t be able to learn from your mistakes, which is the whole reason we make mistakes anyway. They’re learning experiences, so learn! By blaming your tools, your colleagues, your family, the system…you are avoiding taking responsibility for your life and for your own personal development.
Stop shirking this responsibility and start improving your life.
Sometimes you’re not sure if it’s going to work out. It just seems that you’ve worked hard to get what you want but that things aren’t really going your way.
Keep going.
So many people stop when their success is just around the corner. When it’s inches away, when it’s moments from their grasp…
If only they knew.
They would have kept going for just that little bit longer. They had the energy to keep going. But not the motivation. They’d run out of momentum. It was too hard, too difficult, too much effort…
They should have kept going.
The people who are really successful in life are the ones who have really worked hard at it. They are the ones who have kept going when others have stopped. They’ve kept having another shot at it. They haven’t given up at the first hurdle. They’ve endured, persevered, persisted…
They’ve kept going.
Image: Philo Nordlund
I might get caught but I actually think I’d have a reasonable chance of getting away with it. In fact I think that lots of people could, it’s probably pretty easy. The guys that get caught doing it are normally idiots.
But I wouldn’t ever rob a bank.
Obviously the chance of going to jail is a deterrent, but the main reason I wouldn’t do it is because I don’t think stealing is right.
But the point is that I, along with lots of other people, could.
There are a lot of things that you could do but whether you should or not is a different question.
You could:
The point is, bigger isn’t always better. The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence but the reality may be that you’re better where you are.
Image: david drexler
A million used to seem like a big number but it’s not anymore. You’re actually one in 6.8 billion. As a human you’re not rare. But as the unique individual that you are, you most certainly are rare. But in terms of how you live your life – are you actually rare or are you just another one of the masses?
One sure way to be rare is to be excellent.
You don’t have to be famous, you don’t have to be the best, you just have to strive for excellence. Strangely, it’s an unusual approach to life.
Excellence is out there but it’s not always valued, or even noticed (like this world famous violinist playing in the Washington DC subway at rush hour). Ironically you can’t always make as much money out of something excellent as you can from something mediocre (or even crap).
Andy McKee is an excellent guitar player:
He’s rare because he’s put a lot of effort into learning how to play the guitar in a unique way. Most people who learn the guitar just learn a few chords and then their guitar becomes an ornament gathering dust in their bedroom.
Don’t be just another safe, average, middle-of-the-road version of you. Be the excellent one that you are more than capable of being. It’s really the only way to go.
Image: DVIDS247When the proverbial hits the fan or when everything seems to happen at once, it’s easy to move into firefighting mode. We concentrate on the immediate problem. We drop the things that keep us sane. We don’t go to the gym because there isn’t time. We eat fast food because we’re too tired to cook. We neglect ourselves and our lives.
This is an understandable reaction. We’re putting all our energies into dealing with the big problems, we’ve prioritised them and put other things to the side. But it’s not the best way.
What we should be doing in difficult times is really adhering to the things that keep us sane. This is the time we should be going to the gym so that we can burn off some stress, and keep a state of balance in our lives. We should take the time to eat properly and get enough rest so that we can face the challenges with a healthy mind and body.
Easier said than done of course, but in the long run it makes life a lot more manageable.