It's time to ditch your excuses.

We all make excuses. We all have excuses to stop ourselves from doing things we don’t want to do. In this post, we want to look at 6 ways to ditch your excuses.

Unfortunately, those same excuses that stop us from doing things we don’t want to do also keep us from projects and adventures we are interested in. Excuses give us reasons to be lazy, stubborn, and scared.

When it comes to excuses, we never seem to run out of them.

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How do we stop making excuses? Here are 6 ways to ditch your excuses.

1. Decide what it is you want

By this, I mean what you truly want. Not the things you think you want but don’t really.

Not the things you tell yourself you want but aren’t prepared to work for. Not the things that sound good when you talk to your friends about them, yet you fail to do anything but talk about them.

When you are trying to decide what it is you want, start with these questions.

  • Are you willing to make sacrifices or compromises to make this project happen?
  • Are you ready to fully commit to the project?
  • Are you steadfast in your resolve, or is your resolve wavering?

When it all comes down to it, it’s normally the things we are genuinely passionate about and wholeheartedly committed to that end up winning us over.

Related post – What Sacrifices Are You Willing to Make to Achieve Your Goals?

2. Be honest about your to-do list

Does anyone ever write, sit on the couch for three hours, and watch streaming on their to-do list?

Probably not. Yet many people end up doing that exact thing when they have more important things to do.

They neglect the actions they were convinced were so important when they wrote them on their to-do list.

Be realistic about your to-do list.

A good start to ditching your excuses is having tasks on your list that you are genuinely excited about seeing through to completion. You need activities on your to-do list that will give you a sense of accomplishment and joy.

This sense of achievement and purpose will give you more incentive to get the least exciting tasks on your list completed.

An excellent productivity book that can help you is Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. This book is a productivity classic. It’s small, but it’s a pocket rocket of information.

3. Understand why you aren’t going after what you want

This is where the usual group of suspects comes into play – fear of success, fear of failure, fear that you aren’t good enough, fear that you don’t have what it takes to get the job done. The usual suspects.

We use these as excuses for not taking action.

While all of the above are seen as valid fears, I can’t help but wonder if that is precisely the problem. We use them for excuses before they are so common. No one blinks if you say you have a fear of failure because everyone feels the same way from time to time. It’s a universal fear. So, therefore, acceptable.

It could also be a big fat lie. It could be an acceptable excuse to cover up a less acceptable one.

Who wants to admit to themselves or those close to them that they just can’t be bothered to go after their dream? I’m afraid of success sounds much more socially acceptable than I’m too lazy to do the work, now doesn’t it?

Dig into your excuses so that you can deal with the real reason you are holding yourself back.

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4. Stop rewarding yourself when you don’t deserve it

We start working on an important project, and about an hour in, we decide we need a break. Better yet, we need a reward for all of our hard work. We deserve it after all.

Before we know it, we are wasting time on an unimportant task.

By this point, our motivation is out the window, our enthusiasm diminished, and our discipline is heading for the fridge. It’s much easier to convince ourselves how hard we have been working than to head back to our project.

After all, we can always get back to our project later or even worse, tomorrow.

Related post – How to Reward Yourself the Right Way

5. Give yourself a much-needed kick

You have two choices.

You can get over those big, scary fears and complete your task from start to finish, or you can head back to your spot on the couch and be mediocre.

Harsh, I know.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be content with your life as it is. It’s important to embrace and enjoy the moment you are in right now. Perhaps you are exactly where you want to be, and that’s a great situation to be in.

It’s a different story, however, if you want to make improvements to your life, career, or business.

If you want amazing things to happen, you have to do something amazing.

You have to DO SOMETHING.

All too often, we want fabulous things to happen to us, yet we do nothing to make them happen. We want opportunities to mysteriously fall in our lap. Even on the odd occasion when something amazing does fall in our lap, we don’t jump at it, or we don’t follow through.

We let an amazing opportunity pass us by.

Often, we use self-sabotage and excuses to make sure amazing moments don’t happen.

Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. Your excuses are stopping you from having a better life.

You are stopping yourself. No one else is to blame. Just you. Ask yourself if that’s the person you want to be?

If you are struggling with self-sabotage, this book may help you. Read The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest.

6. Keep moving forward

Good on you. You have completed your project. Perhaps the results were exactly what you were hoping for. Excellent!

Perhaps you didn’t quite hit the mark you were aiming for. Come to think of it, the results were less than stellar. You wonder if your commitment and investment were worth it.

You start to have doubts. The couch is starting to look good again. Here come those same worn-out excuses, galloping at top speed through your mind.

Stop right there.

Time to cut through the negativity. Now is not the time to reach for the remote. (In case you were wondering why I used the remote scenario, it’s one of my own bad habits, which I am currently working on. This post is one of those note-to-self moments.

Now is the time to keep going. Learn from your last experience. Work out where you can improve.

Try again. Keep going.

You need to be aware of the excuses you are hiding behind and work at eliminating them. It takes discipline, determination, and perseverance.

Related post – 12 Reasons Why Perseverance is Important in Life

Ditch your excuses

I know this stuff is pretty basic. But the truth is, we sometimes ignore the basics.

You have what it takes to ditch your excuses – so go for it. Think of all the things you can achieve and all the fun you will have when you stop making excuses.

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