Things don’t always go right. For you, for me, for anyone.

In fact, the very best case scenario might be that most things will go wrong but a few of the right things, the big things, will eventually go right, probably after many failed attempts.

Given the reality, then, that we’ll likely spend the majority of our lives banging our heads against one wall or another, the least (and most helpful thing) we can do is to develop a productive mindset regarding out state of near-perpetual frustration and failure.

For most of us, myself definitely included, our first and most delicious reaction when something goes wrong is to blame someone else.

It doesn’t much matter who, it doesn’t even need to be a person! It might be your annoying colleague, your spouse, your neighbour who borrowed your leaf blower two years ago and never gave it back, your cat, the government, climate change, the media or even all of the above!

Ahhhhhh, doesn’t that feel better now?

Of course it does, that’s the whole point! But does it help us improve our current situation or do better next time?

If you didn’t get the hint, the answer is no. No, it does not.

Excuses, while an effective temporary salve, do us little good in the long run, and the sooner we can eliminate them from our background mental dialogue, the better.

If you have big goals for your business, your work, and your life, the surest way to see that you never achieve them is to shift responsibility for the repeated failures and missteps along the way to anyone but yourself.

Of course, this applies not only to singular events but also to long, drawn-out circumstances, the current state of things, the status quo in our niche, industry or world.

If you want your current situation to change, you need to change.

Eliminating Excuses In 3 Steps

Excuses are a habit and a deeply ingrained one at that. You’re not going to be able to eliminate them overnight.

But fear not! We’re going to eliminate excuses the fun* way by turning it into a game. Huzzah!

*Yes this is the kind of fun “game” your parents used to get you to eat your vegetables, do your homework, or shut up in the back seat of the car on family road trips… But play along, k?

Here’s how it works.

1. Catch Your Excuses

Ok, I’m not gonna lie, the first step is the hardest, but once you’ve developed this habit, everything else going forward is going to be much easier.

Before you can eliminate excuses from your vocabulary, you have to realize you’re actually making them.

Most of us don’t think we’re whiners, complainers, or excuse-makers even when we often are, which can make spotting our excuses difficult.

Set a daily goal of intentionally seeking out 3 excuses you make, either mentally to yourself or out loud to others, and write them down.

By conditioning your brain to keep an eye out for them, your eyes will likely soon be opened (hopefully in horror) to the sheer amount of subconscious blame-shifting you do on an average day.

While this may be a painful realization, especially to those of us who hold a personal identity of being self-sufficient, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps-type people, it’s the necessary first step towards reshaping our mindset around ownership over our circumstances.

2. Matching Excuses with Ownership

Once you’ve developed a keen eye for your own excuses, the next step is countering them with personal ownership.

The next time you catch yourself making an excuse or blaming someone else for something that happened, catch yourself, identify the excuse, and then come up with one tiny way in which you are responsible for the situation.

You don’t have to believe it, you don’t have to accept the whole of the blame, but you do have to come up with something.

Build the habit of matching excuses with responsibility until it becomes natural to at least split the blame for any negative circumstance that befalls you.

If you want to really annoy the people around you (and let’s be honest, don’t we all?) go out of your way to take ownership over everything and everything to the point that people argue with you to show how it was, in fact, their fault and not yours…

3. Determine a Possible Solution

Ok, so you’re aware of your excuses, you’re taking personal responsibility when they arise, and if you’re lucky you’ve thoroughly annoyed everyone around you with your newfound holier-than-thou attitude*.

*If they complain, tell them you can go back to blaming them for everything that goes wrong in your life if they want…

In short, you’re on the right track. But there’s one more step.

On top of the personal ownership you now meet every excuse with, stack on one action you could take to improve the situation.

Again, this doesn’t need to be a Herculean effort that solves the problem in one fell swoop. The point is to condition your brain to default to meeting each challenge with a potential solution, or at least an action that will make things better, even marginally, than they currently are.

As an added bonus, you’ll find that developing this skill and sharing your solutions to other people’s problems and excuses is yet another way to annoy everyone around you!

Countering excuses and developing this mindset won’t reduce the number of lemons life hands you, but it will drastically affect the quality and quantity of the lemonade you’re able to turn them into.

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