What is Excusitis? Well it is the constant making up of excuses for poor performance or consistant failures. This problem can prevent a perfectly capable person from living up to their full potential because it allows them to blame their lack of action or failure on anything but themselves.
They never own or take responsibility for their problems and therefore they are unable to come up with effective solutions.
I believe everyone suffers from a bit of excusitis at one time or another. However, if you find that Excusitis is becoming a bad habit that is preventing you from fulfilling your dreams, now is the time to sit up and take note. That being said, here are 5 Steps to rid yourself of Excusitis once and for all.
Take Responsibility
When something doesn’t turn out how you planned eg. such as you were late turning in a project at work because your printer suddenly ran out of ink. Analyse what went wrong instead of making an excuse, and then accept responsibility for what occured. Once you do this, you will learn from your experience and you will be more likely to prevent the episode from happening again in the future.
Ask Yourself Power Questions
When problems occur, take notice of your response. If you are making excuses, stop yourself dead in your tracks, and ask yourself what I call a Power Question. For example, “If I had to do this over again, what would I do differntly?” or “How could I provide a better Service/Product next time?” By asking yourself Power questions like this you will get your subconcious mind working on solutions to your problems. Once you get your subconcious working for you, your problems will diminish!!
Take Daily Action Steps Toward Your Dreams
Make taking action towards your dreams a daily adventure. Don’t let any excuses such as Money, Age etc stop you from doing this. For example lets say your dream is to travel to Africa to see Elephants in the Wild. However, you have a low income job and a family to feed and you just don’t have the money. That my friend is just an excuse.
True, you may not have the money right this second, but that does not mean you will never have the money. So take small steps every day to realise this dream. Your steps may be very small at first, such as finding out how much a trip like that would cost. However, if you keep working on how you can achieve your dreams, that big old subconcious mind of yours will start to deliver ideas and ways that will bring you exactly what you want. Belive me this works.
Face Your Fears
That’s right, Face Your Fears, once you face up to your fear and do the thing you fear most, it no longer controls you. This will put you firmly back in the driving seat of your life, you will not longer have to use fear as an excuse for you not taking action.
Learn from Failure
Instead of thinking up an excuse for your failures in life, use them learning experiences and stepping stones an your path to success. Think like Thomas Eddison, who when asked, “what did it feel like to have failed 2,500 times while trying to invent the electric light bulb?” is said to have replied, “I did not fail! I discovered 2,500 ways in which the electric light bulb will not work.”
When Eddison framed his problem in this manner, he left the matter wide open for his subconscious mind to come up with solutions. Guess what? It worked, Thomas Eddison went on to invent the light bulb in December 1879.
So the next time you have a bout of that awful excusitis, use these five steps and pretty soon you will not only be more in control of your life, but you will be well on your way to making your dreams your reality.
To Your Success
Roma Catherine
Ps; Don’t forget to let me know if you have any tips for overcoming Excusitis, just comment below;-)