In reaching your deepest aspirations in life, you need the assertion to conquer challenges. Struggles hone you into becoming the person you always wanted to be. If you always find yourself making excuses to face things, you are not pushing yourself beyond your limits. Thus, you need to stop making excuses to attain success in life.
When you want success in your life, you have to start with the discipline to keep your eyes on the prize. Even if you have already set goals in your mind, when you don’t practice the habits that will help you materialize them, you are bound to fail. One thing that prevents people from getting what they want is by making up excuses and procrastination.
Making excuses tricks you into thinking you can do things later while wasting the chance to act as early as now.
Why you need to stop making excuses
If you don’t want to regret slacking off and reasoning out invalid habits, you need to stop making excuses. Continuing to do so will just result in the following:
- Fail to explore your full potential
- Build the habit of laziness
- Stifle your ability to grow and learn
- Influence others to be just as complacent
- Negatively impact how others perceive you
- Lose your sense of responsibility and accountability
- Cause you to dwell on the negative
- Makes you think of the “what ifs” in your life
- Prevents you from making rational decisions
Reasons to make excuses
There are several reasons why people tend to make an excuse instead of diving headfirst in their responsibilities. Here are some of them:
- Fear of failure
- Fear of the unknown
- Lack of assertion
- Uncertainty of the results
- No defined goals
- Comparison of oneself to others
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of confidence
- Presumption about capacity and resources
- Stubbornness to take on things
- Laziness and constant procrastination
- Incapability to change for the better
How to stop making excuses to live your best life
You know you got it worse when your default response to any responsibility is a made-up excuse to escape accountability. But you need to understand that this will lead you to nowhere if you don’t get your act together. Here are several ways how you can build the habit of taking actions rather than making excuses.
1. Face your fears
Be it fear of the unknown, failure, or mistakes; you need to learn how to face your fears to conquer these. To get out of your comfort zone, you need to take risks and meet what’s out there. If you don’t even try, you are holding back the potential you possess. You will never know anything if you just stick with what you know and where you are comfortable.
2. Accept your mistakes
Mistakes are normal—you don’t have to bear the heavyweight of pressure just because you made a simple mistake. These are the flaws in life that you need to embrace in order to grow and learn. Don’t beat yourself up over the past mistakes; instead, navigate your perspective towards improving necessary aspects in your habits.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others
Everyone has their own path to take—don’t peek at others and wish you could have been them. You have your own capacity, and you handle the opportunities that come your way. If you aspire to have the same triumphs other people have, you have the ability to carve your own path to get there. Avoid making an excuse just because you see others do it in a particular way—you do you.
4. Define your goals
Be it long- or short-term, goals are your key to success. Without them, you have no direction towards what you want to achieve in life. When you have them, you are eager to take action because you have a clear knowledge of where you are headed.
Setting your goals straight allows you to clear out the distractions and keep your focus on achieving success. What can help you set SMART goals is by taking up this goal-setting mastery course: Goal Setting Mastery – Accomplish More Than You Ever Thought Possible. The online resource will teach you the secrets to defining the right goals and achieving them ultimately.
5. Stop overthinking
Sometimes your overthinking is the cause of delaying things. When you contemplate almost everything, you lose the chance to grab opportunities right when they present themselves to you. Dwelling on every aspect will lead you to excessive expectations that can result in disappointments. Avoid overthinking and take every chance that comes your way to minimize regrets in your decisions.
6. Don’t blame others
Don’t fall into the belief that other people have something to do with your misfortune. You make your decision, and playing the blame game will not help you find resolutions to problems. If you rely on others too much, it’s easy to blame them when things don’t go according to plans. However, it’s not their fault that you depended on them too much. You should take accountability over mistakes and avoid pointing fingers just to prove you are not at fault.
7. Hold accountability
As a result of not pointing fingers, you make yourself accountable over every decision you made. When this happens, you accept your shortcomings. Recognition of responsibility and owning mistakes manifest accountability. Having learned these will skip you from making excuses and help you just focus on improving oneself.
8. Be vulnerable
Although it’s only logical to have the thick skin to face anything, the vulnerability can humble you into doing things you are not usually accustomed to. When you open yourself to vulnerabilities, you recognize the fact that you have weaknesses, and you need to improve them. Being stubborn will not help at all in making you achieve success.
9. Change what needs to be changed
After recognition of what needs improvement, execute the practices that’ll help you overcome them. What value does your recognition have if you won’t work on changing them? You need to adapt to changes that will help you become better.
10. Find motivation in everything you do
The lack of motivation has a significant impact on how you will tackle tasks. How can you push yourself to strive hard if you don’t see the reason for it? Motivation encourages you to function because you know what’s in it for you. Practice finding motivation to pursue things more eagerly.
11. Cast your doubts aside
Self-doubts are pretty normal when you are not sure of yourself. However, the lack of confidence ruins your chance to explore your utmost potential. Don’t dwell on your uncertainties and the presumption that you lack the knowledge, experience, and resources. Instead, focus on building your confidence.
12. Claim success
As the old saying goes, “Believe you can, and you are halfway there.” When you claim success, you are most likely to attain it. You attract what you want. Claiming success establishes this connection to come closer to what you want to have. Stop thinking of the negatives, claim triumph, and surely, you will earn it in the end.
It may take some effort to develop the habit of assertion. But imagine how your life will be if you just stop making excuses. There will be more room for success and less negativity in your life. You are basically opening yourself to better opportunities that you fully deserve.
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