No More Excuses

I can’t do it.
It’s too hard.
I’m afraid.
I’m too tired to workout.
What will other people think?
It’s not the right time.
I have to do something else first.
It’s too cold/too hot/too windy/too sunny...

Word selection - what you say is what you get. How you think and what you think creates your reality. Most people will argue that it’s external circumstances that control life. I disagree. We are creators. Everything that exists in our society is the product of imagination. Someone dreamed of a ‘flying machine’ and the Wright Brothers manifested a dream into the external world. Thomas Edison successfully created the light bulb – a product of his creative imagination – after about 1,000 successive attempts.

Where would we be if Edison and the Wright brothers had said, ‘It’s too hard’, or ‘It can’t be done’? The answer is redundant. When you make the statement, ‘I can’t’ you are absolutely correct. No, that is not contradictory to what I wrote earlier. When you say, ‘I can’t’ you simply ‘won’t’ because you have told yourself you cannot.

This is not about being hard on yourself, it’s about being truthful. Think about how crazy it is to convince yourself why you cannot do something. You are lying to yourself. To yourself! Now why would you want to do that? Why would you choose to squash your own potential?

The only person’s opinion that matters is your own. Decide on your own truth. When you are afraid of something, face it with open arms and say to yourself, ‘Thank you. Without this fear I would not know that I am on the path to change, to create something great in my lifetime.’ We need fear – fear can be a healthy response to real, physical danger, like crossing the street and forgetting to look. You freak out and jump back saving yourself from being hit by a car. That’s the fear we need. The fears we need to control are the fears that we allow to sabotage our truth. I’ve written about these fears before – they keep us in our comfort zones. These fears are the excuses we use to procrastinate or to justify why we are not good enough/qualified enough/smart enough, etc.

Next time you feel the fear, or speak to yourself with a negative word selection, stop what you are doing and physically move somewhere else and sit down. I don’t care if it’s from one chair to another. Stop, focus only on your breathing and relax your mind. Ask yourself, ‘What am I stressing about?’, ‘What can I control?’, ‘What can I do now?’ Get a piece of paper or your journal and write out your thoughts. Make notes about what you can control (your thoughts and actions) and break down into small steps what you can do today. Choose the most important actions you can take to fulfill and realize your intentions. Ask yourself, ‘What is the single, most important thing I can do RIGHT NOW that will have the most positive impact (on my life/career/finances/relationship, etc.)?’ Then take action and complete the task. We simply feel better when we complete tasks and achieve goals.

There is only the HERE and the NOW. And we can only take action in the present. Worrying KEEPS you in the past or places you in a 'future past'. LET IT ALL GO while taking action to succeed. Every step towards your goals and intentions is a SUCCESSIVE step. Do you see the word play? One step follows the next. Yes, we trip now and then but we get up and take the next, successive step. Thus failure is only an illusion to understand what success IS.

No more excuses...

© 2006 by Integrated Fitness Inc. and Darren Stehle