If there is one thing that will stop you from achieving your goals and dreams it’s excuses. Excuses come in all shapes and sizes and humans are excellent at creating them. We tell ourselves things like, it wasn’t meant to be, maybe I’m not supposed to have money, I deserve a new car so I’ll finance it, money is the root of all evil, this is my plight and on and on.
If you are inclined to give excuses you either change or you will live a life of mediocrity. No one likes the word “change” but it’s the only thing you can do to overcome mediocrity. The only thing that stops success are excuses. It’s a plague. Everything else becomes a reason.
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “he that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” I love this quote because it contains a deep truth, the person who is good at getting out of doing what it takes will never have what others dreamed.
I believe you can do anything you set your mind to. If you are 50 and want to start a new life, do it, I started over at 47. I didn’t want to start over but because of a series of bad decisions I was forced to. That was a little over three years ago and I can look at those bad decisions and confidently say, they were the best learning experience I could have had. They changed my life for the better but watching millions of dollars evaporate overnight and having to find myself at 47 was not an easy undertaking and giving up would have been an easy path. But I knew with everything in me, that it was simply the end of phase in my life.
You can’t control what life throws at you, you can only control how you react to it.
Nick Vujicic was born in Australia and was born with tetra-amelia syndrome. Nick was one of seven people in the world alive today who was born with no limbs. If there was any person with the right to give up it is Nick. I’ve included Nick’s Ted Talk below, it’s just under 15 minutes and I highly recommend you watch.
Nick is such a motivation for me because he does everything. He has authored 8 best-selling books and he’s one of the top motivational speakers in the world. He has a gorgeous wife and 4 children. Of course he suffered from depression, of course he had tremendous obstacles to overcome but he never let that stand in is way for very long. We all suffer at times but giving up can’t be an option. The only way to give up is to make excuses on why you can’t press on.
If you want to have success in whatever you set out to do, there is a sure fire way to overcome excuses. When an excuses pops into mind, and they will, you have to ask yourself, why can’t I? When something tells you you’re not going to be successful ask, why not? When something tells you your marriage will not last, ask, why not? When something tells you that you can’t lose the weight ask, why not? When you ask, why not, it forces you into excuse mode but your mind will begin to find reasons why you can. All you need is a glimmer of hope to begin to believe that you can do what you set your mind to. Challenges will arise but ask yourself why you can’t overcome it. If your one focus is to press on to the goal, no matter how many obstacles arise, you will ask, why can’t I get past this? And you’ll find the strength to press on.
It’s in the obstacles you will find your path.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney
Here’s a Ted Talk video about Nick.