The 1980 movie, “The Blues Brothers”, starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd and an all star cast, had both great music and really hilarious scenes. One of those scenes involved Belushi and Ackroyd using a tunnel to get to their car and avoid being captured by the police. As they are walking through the tunnel suddenly a mystery woman who has been trying to kill them all throughout the movie appears and is armed with an M-16 rifle. It turns out that it was Belushi’s ex-fiance that he jilted at the altar. She is after revenge. She tells Belushi that is about to die, stating “You betrayed me.” Then he drops to his knees and pleads the following. ” No I didn’t. Honest. I ran out of gas. I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. It wasn’t my fault, I swear to God!”
I think at one time or another we have all played that scene. Excuses are deadly. They kill honesty. They kill personal responsibility. They kill growth. They kill credibility. When something goes south in your life, they throw a sheet over your bedroom wall mirror and tell you to look everywhere else, look anywhere else, but don’t look at yourself. As long as the excuses keep flowing, your troubles will keep on growing.
Excuses are fundamentally different than reasons. Reasons are real. Excuses are phony. What is meant by that is that sometimes motivation, focus and determination may still not be quite enough. There may be legitimate reasons why a specific desire has not yet been achieved. You may bear responsibility for caring for a child with multiple handicaps where your daily free time is counted in minutes rather than hours. You may be caring for an elderly parent who has issues that require huge chunks of your daily time. You may be mightily struggling to pay the bills each month with just keeping your head above water a much higher priority than learning the perfect swimming breaststroke. You may only have a handful of energy left every day after tending to work, chores and things that crop up. These may be considered reasons. Excuses are when you do have some time, you do have some resources, you do have some ability, you do have some opportunity and yet, you still make the choice to do something else other than go after your desire. Then you use excuses to execute the con job. Even if legitimate reasons exist however, you can still do whatever you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are at. Even if it is just some tiny little thing each and every day that you can do (ie., a five minute scientific prayer), it will make a positive difference in your life.
When you say to yourself, “Enough with the excuses already…Enough”, and just throw them overboard as useless cargo, you will feel an immediate jolt of lightness and that wonderful feeling of being in greater control of your precious life. You will suddenly find yourself dealing more effectively with any legitimate reasons that your goal has not yet been achieved. You will be pleasantly surprised to discover that even your overall physical health will improve thus increasing your inner storehouse of energy.
Deal with the reasons as best as you know how to do. Use everything and anything in your personal arsenal to work past them. At the same time, get rid of the excuses. They are not serving you. Wherever you are on your life journey, putting those phony excuses in permanent quarantine, will immediately put you in a better place.