Lets Get Results Not Excuses

An Excuse is a safely guarded lie. Excuses become familiar in addictive behaviors and they begin to appear harmless. And that is why they're so dangerous. We can’t differentiate  a reason from an excuse because their boundaries blend and blur. Alcoholism is full of these safely guided lies. Intervention is a lie buster, but it requires us to come out of excuses first.

Read this tale….
A wolf could not get to the sheep because of the shepherd and his dogs. But one day he found a sheepskin that had been put aside and forgotten.
The next day, the wolf disguised himself by throwing the skin over his body, and walked in the field among the sheep. Before long a little lamb was following him about and was quickly led away and eaten. This continued over time, unnoticed by the shepherd. Gradually the group was greatly reduced in number, and the shepherd's profits were reduced to about zero.

Moral: Beware of dangerous things that become familiar, and thus appear harmless!

Together, we make up the culture in which excuse-making flourishes. Excuse-making is a slow-creeping deadly disease. However, excuses are not real problems; real problems reside underneath the excuses. Real problems are more serious. Excuses are like the tip of an iceberg! For all that we see, there is much more that we don't see. Rest assured, there are excellent tools available to eliminate excuse making. When flesh is weak, it finds a thousand excuses. When the spirit is willing, it finds a thousand reasons.

Do you know as to why we make excuses? Here you go! There is a generational learning in excuse making.. Excuses develop in a Family system and trickle down. Another thing in the system is harsh criticism. We are told in no uncertain terms that we amount to be nothing. We become sick and tired and develop shame. Reality looks like a serious threat. The main cause of our excuse making is to avoid further pain because we are scared. Deep down, we believe that we are not okay. Excuses help us feel better in the here and now. In the long run we pay dearly.

We develop a phobia of psychological pain and cook up excuses to build up defenses. We start acting from the mindset of a victim. We feel entitled without a merit, deny responsibility, adopt a can’t do attitude, delay things, and blame others. We say things like: “That’s me. That’s just the way I am. There is nothing I can do about it.” “I can’t do that. I just don’t have the time.” “If only my husband was more reasonable!”

Excuses can be quantified, measured and eliminated effortlessly by working on the root cause ---sense of not-okayness. This would be like killing many birds with one stone. The whole Intervention team needs this Excuse Buster Program. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. That is true for Intervention team too. The secret to eliminate excuses is to act with foresight rather than hindsight with a dynamic Leadership. Ownership is a big chunk of what it takes to get rid of excuses.

when excuse making reduces by 1%, the progress in results increases by 10%.