Get Out of Your Own Way and Stop Making Excuses

Get Out of Your Own Way and Stop Making Excuses

When you make excuses for who you are, what you do, and how you spend your time, you are just lying to yourself. These are still excuses, even if you have convinced yourself they are valid reasons. Here are some ways to stop making excuses and finally get out of your own way.

You’re Not Special

This is a really hard truth that takes a lot of work to accept, but you need to understand that you are not special. You have many unique talents and skills, but you are not special in the way that you are some exception. Excuses you tell yourself about how even if it has worked for other people, it couldn’t possibly work for you, is just a way to get out of trying.

How do you know? Are you psychic? Do you think you are so different from everyone else? If you do the work, and you try your hardest, you have done all you can do. There is NO reason you can’t accomplish what other people have accomplished, unless you keep holding yourself back with these lame excuses.

Identify Your Excuses

If you know you make a lot of excuses for why you are not putting in the effort or trying to face your fears, then it is time to identify all the excuses you tell yourself. This can be done in your mind, though it is easier to find clarity by writing it down.

Find a journal or notebook and just write down all the “reasons” you think you can’t do something, why life has not worked out, and where you think your life went wrong. Think of WHY your life is the way it is right now.

Now look at your list – those aren’t reasons. They are not obstacles. They are EXCUSES. Opportunities for you to lie to yourself and allow challenges in your life to keep you from being who you can be.

Your Misfortune is Yours Alone

It is not uncommon to feel like you are just unlucky in life, that things are worse for you than other people, and that those truths are good enough reason for you to make excuses. But guess what? This is total crap. This has nothing to do with “bad luck”. You are not a victim of circumstance, you are instead using situations you have been in as a way to get out of doing what you need to do.

If this is how you want to spend your life, go ahead, but you don’t get to complain about it anymore. Making excuses is a form of self-sabotage and is only causing you to get in your own way and block your own happiness.

Take Responsibility and Get on with Your Life

If you want to get on with your life, stop with the excuses and take responsibility. The majority of things that happen in your life are at least partly your fault, even if it’s a decision you made that caused the “misfortune”. Look at whatever you are complaining about with fresh eyes and understand the part you played in it. This is how you will get out of your own way and move on.