No B.S Friday: If you’re making excuses, you’re giving away your power.
I’ve got a mate who’s always got a million beautiful excuses.
And it bugs the crap out of me.
Nothing is ever his fault. He brings the trailer back full of crap, “Sorry the missus said she was going to clean it but she didn’t.”
He misses deadlines. It’s his boss’s fault for distracting him with other tasks and not giving him the resources he needs.
He’s going nowhere financially. It’s the economy, or shonky investment advisers, or his mother’s nagging that’s holding him back.
So many excuses.
And most of them don’t even hold water. Some of them don’t even make sense.
But I was trying to think why this bugged me so much.
What do I care about these different situations? Most of the time it doesn’t affect me.
But when I was thinking about it, the thing that I realised was so frustrating for me was just how automatic it was.
He was afraid of taking responsibility. He was afraid of blame. And so no matter what happens, even if it’s something completely trivial, a beautiful excuse bursts out of him before his conscious mind has even had a chance to clock what he’s saying.
He has an automatic forcefield up against responsibility.
I realise that this was frustrating for me because there’s something terrible that sneaks in here.
If you allow your subconscious to continually absolve itself of any responsibility in life – if nothing is ever your fault – then you are giving away your power.
If the things that happen in your life are not your responsibility, then you are saying that you are the victim of circumstance. Life happens to you. It’s out of your control.
This is a terrible posture to take into the world.
Because I think the reality is that we need to be the opposite.
If we want to be the architects of our life – if we want to build life on our own terms, and have independent wealth, and the time to do the things we love, etc. If we want design and build our own life on our own terms, then we need power.
We need to see that our life is within our control, and that we have agency over what happens.
The further we take this process – the more responsibility we take on – the more influence we can have on our life.
And so these days I describe myself as responsibility seeking. I try to train my subconscious to take responsibility for literally everything.
Seriously, sometimes it will rain and I’ll feel like apologising for people.
And look, I know that I’m not responsible for the weather, but I have trained myself to assume responsibility for everything in my life.
It is all – all of it – within my power.
So don’t reach for the deflective cop-out of excuses.
Learn to take responsibility – for everything.
The more you can do this, the more of your life you bring under your own control.
JG.
Linda Troxler says
Surround yourself with positive people and be grateful for everything you have. Say Thank You to God for food, for a roof over you head, for clothes, for your health, for your happiness, for your children, for your wife, for the day, for the sun, clouds, rain, or whatever the weather is, —-be grateful for your life. do not let the negative things in life fill your head and take away your positive attitude. turn off th3e TV, Radio, or anything that distracts you from being just yourself. And that’s my two cents worth.