Kissing The Big Excuses Goodbye

“At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, and no regrets.”
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

There are basically two big excuses we all utilise:

The first one is: I can’t really help the way I am; after all, people can’t change their DNA.

What a great excuse this is. It easily excuses you from your behaviour. When you use these kind of excuses, you can place blame onto so many other people like your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your teachers, your coaches.

However, guess what? It’s not that good an excuse after all. Research has shown that we actually do change and that approximately 95 percent of us do not have genetic reasons for illness, depression, fear, and many other conditions.

The second excuse is related to the way you were raised, your early start in life and your conditioning by your family. Many of us hold onto this so tightly that we honestly believe we are the way we are because of the actions and behaviours of those around us.

I have good news! Just because you were raised in a certain way, that does not mean you have to automatically pass that onto future generations.

There is a science behind this and I’m not going to get too technical. The science shows that there are these funny little non-things called memes which are thoughts that you allow to become your master - and make no mistake about it, every excuse you’ve ever used is really a meme disguised as an explanation.

You can deprogram yourself from these memes (mind viruses). A virus isn’t concerned with whether it’s contributing to your well-being or your ill-being because it only wants to penetrate, replicate, and spread. You don’t have to be a victim of anything that was transferred from another mind to yours. Your beliefs have made these memes seem like second nature to you. While excuses are just thoughts or beliefs, you are the decider of what you ultimately store away as your guide to life.

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells,
is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world
by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way . . .
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil . . . “
from the Principles of Psychology, by William James

The Habitual (Subconscious) Mind

If something is subconscious and thus automatic, it’s believed that you don’t have a choice in the matter. And to me, that’s the most regrettable thing about this subconscious model: believing that you don’t have a choice. The truth, as I see it, is that everything you think, say, and do is a choice - and you don’t need to think, speak, or act as you’ve done for your entire life. When you abandon making choices, you enter the best world of excuses.

Examples:

Changing your swimming stroke - many people, when they are taught to swim, are taught to breath after every fourth stroke. However, if you wish to change this, you can. If you wish to breathe after every third stroke, you can. It takes a conscious effort that you have to repeat and repeat and repeat. Over time change is possible.

My daughter, Alanah, broke her right arm. Within two weeks, she was very competent with her left arm and hand for doing most things. Six weeks later, she was really capable with her left arm. Her handwriting was just as good as it had been with her right hand. When her arm was taken out of the plaster, it took us a little while to retrain her to use her right hand and arm again. She had been completely reprogrammed.

When I was first working full time, my boss had a beautiful speaking voice and I loved it. It occurred to me that as a child I didn’t think she would have spoken like that. So I asked her and she told me that when she was about 19 years old, she had decided that she wanted to have a beautiful speaking voice. She trained herself over a number of months to start to speak differently.

My point being that we can train ourselves to change. We just have to decide to do it. Be conscious of our behaviour and start behaviouring in the way we choose!

“Be an inspiration to yourself and
you will be an inspiration to others.”