I Hate Excuses

I tend to pull out what hair I have left when I hear people spew excuses. For me, listening to excuses are like being forced to listen to fingernails on a chalk board. They give me the yips. I’ve heard them all. Excuses you would believe and those that you would not believe. More often than not I’m left shaking my head wondering what is wrong with these people.

It’s a dangerous situation that we find ourselves in. There are too many people making too many excuses for their lack of performance or their lack of success. It’s always the fault of someone else or something else. Wouldn’t it be refreshing just once to hear someone say, “you know the reason that I’m not successful is that I’m just lazy.”

But that won’t happen. Excuses are too easy and convenient. For me, excuses are for those that have given up, those with no dreams to believe in. Even worse they have lost the ability to dream without any restrictions or constraints. If you just have a vision, one that no matter your situation, you can continue to strive toward, the world is a much different place.

Excuses for a lackluster life are just ways to say that you’re satisfied with what you have, or you are too lazy to reach out for anything more. If you’re truly happy with the way things are for you then great. I’m happy for you. But I don’t want to hear you complain about anything or anyone. In my books you don’t have the right to complain. You are the only one that can make it better.

Here are some of my favorite excuses for non-achievement.

1. “I didn’t go to college so I can’t be successful.” (Baloney. College is great but that should not be a deterrent to success. Consider this, Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Ellen DeGeneres all succeeded greatly without traditional education credentials. A full 1/3^rd of the worlds billionaires did not have a bachelor’s degree.)
2. “The economy is bad, so I’ll never be successful. (That’s just a stupid excuse. Successful entrepreneurs find a way to be successful no matter what the economy is. They just figure out a way.”)
3. “I didn’t want to make a bad decision so I’m doing more research!” (You can do all the research you want but there comes a time in every entrepreneurs’ life where you just have to say, the hell with it, close your eyes and step out in faith. It’s time to stop researching and just give it a shot and see what happens. If you fail, you know the failure is only temporary because you have learned from every failure.)
4. “I was raised a farmer; in the ghetto; a poor laborer. I’ve been told my whole life that I’m not supposed to be successful. My family wasn’t prosperous, so I won’t be.” (What a crock. Many famous and wealthy people were raised poor/immigrants/ethnic/fill in the blank, and yet they persevered and became quite successful. It’s all about your vision, your drive, your willingness to learn. You are in total control. You are what you think about most of the time. If you think survival you will only survive. If you think thriving, then your destiny is to thrive. If you can dream and believe in that dream, then you can be anything that you have the nerve to dream.

You owe it to yourself. You owe your entire family tree to do something more and to prove to generations to come that no matter your background, no matter where you come from anything is possible if you believe it is.