Now that I’ve committed to giving up excuses and hopefully making great leaps towards my dreams, there’s the practical problem of how to go about this.  There seems to be a great variety of approaches out there  – here are just five of the better articles I came across:

1. Catch Yourself Making Excuses, Then do Something About It
2. To Become Rich You Must Stop Making Excuses
3. Compelling Case Against Change…
4. No More Excuses
5. Break Bad Habits: Rewire Your Brain in 14 Days

It’s interesting how the excuses identified seem to be universal but what to do about it does not.  I have to say I disagree with those that say just to do something  and the excuse will disappear like magic and agree with Dr. Dyer that if you don’t change your thinking, you will just rack up ammunition in defense of your excuse.  These are the real life-impeding excuses anyway, not just the ones along the lines of it’s too hot, wet, cold to mow the lawn.  Think along the lines of someone that sees a fundamental impediment in themselves to finding true love – too old, too fat, too tall, etc.  who ‘does something’ to change like trying speed dating or letting friends set up a blind date,  but doesn’t change their thinking about why they’re single.  Odds are good that whatever action they took will not have deep or lasting impact on what they want until they ‘undo’ the excuse and may well add fuel in the self-talk “I told you so!”.

So what I’ve decided to do is work on one core excuse a week for the first half of ‘the year’ and then projects for the second half. That way I’ll tackle the thinking that spreads across my life as well as what is holding me back in specific areas.  I used the excuses catalog in Excuses Begone as a place to start, crossing out the few that I don’t use and adding in some of my own. I typed up the list of my 26 most frequently used excuses and cut them apart, folded them up and put them in a ceramic jar.  Each week I’ll randomly pull one out to focus on, watch for and correct.  I’m under no illusions that these will go away in a week, after all some of them have been in use for thirty plus years but I think a week will get me started on catching when and how I try to use it and get new thoughts started that I can reach for easily in the future.

This week’s target excuse:  I can’t afford it

An interesting place to start…

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