Stop saying "No excuses!"

There are always excuses.

Telling me there are no excuses just flips my brain into we’ll-see-about-that mode. Don’t try to tell me that there are no excuses because I will find hundreds.

So it goes without saying that the “no excuses” approach to self-improvement, goal-setting, or motivational whatever just doesn’t work for me. And if it doesn’t work for me, I’m guessing there are more than a few people reading this for whom those words are more like bait than magic.

For those of us who can’t keep our brains from interfering, here’s a better approach:

Make excuses.

Make as many excuses as you can think of — a whole list of reasons why you can’t do the thing you’re “trying” to do.

Seriously think of everything you possibly can.

Done?

Think of three more. You should have a list of at least ten, maybe even 20. The point is to try to get ahead of any other excuses that might show up later. If you only have five, fine.

Once you’ve made a nice beautiful list of extensive and perhaps very excellent and reasonable excuses…

Destroy them.

One by one, find all the reasons why each of your reasons is stupid. Turn your excellent excuse-making skill back on itself.

Keep that document for reference anytime you think you can’t do the thing because of whatever excuse.

But what if I don’t have time to make a list?

Then you acknowledge to yourself that there are likely tons of good excuses and reasons to not do the thing that you are trying to accomplish, and you tell yourself that even though there ARE excuses, you’re going to embrace your inner rebel, put on your big kid Nikes, and just do it anyway.

What if it doesn’t matter that much?

It’s possible that at the end of this exercise you may find that the thing you were wanting/needing/hoping to do actually just doesn’t matter to you for any subjective or objective reason. In which case, skip it. Skip that thing and go find another goal worth pursuing.

I hope you have an amazingly productive week!

Monica