1. “I don’t have time”
You’re right, you probably don’t and it’s probably fixable. According to this statistic, the average person spends about 3 hours on social media. 3 FREAKIN’ HOURS! Now I know people who run online businesses who don’t even spend nearly that amount of time on social media. The point is that you probably have time but you choose to use it in another fashion. A simple way to reveal this is to track your time over the next three days. Here is a list of time tracking apps you can choose from to see how you use your time. What you’re really saying is that you don’t have energy, because we all have the same amount of time, 168 hours a week. So by freeing up some time by tracking it and hopefully ridding of some time wasters, you now have energy to put forth, and can no longer use the excuse “I don’t have time.”
2. “I don’t know how to do it”
Regardless of topic, it’s more than likely you can either teach yourself how to do it or find someone who can teach you how to do it. You want to design a logo for your business? Fiverr designs start at $5 and is delivered within days. You want to train your dog how to sit? Type that into google and you’ll get more tips than you can handle. You want to understand how to love your partner better? Buy this book for as little as $8. You want to lower your blood sugar, have more energy, manage your stress better and lose fat effortlessly? The blog your reading right now creates 2-3 FREE posts for you a week on that very topic. You want to learn how to exercise? There is a gym on every corner now, much like Starbucks. You want to start a blog? Wordpress is FREE to set up. You want to become a trainer or coach in any field? The online education space is exploding with courses that can be done virtually. Put simply, the “I don’t know how to do it” excuse is simply a lazy one.
3. “I’ll do it tomorrow”
This is like when you walk into a coffee shop and they have a sign posted up by the register that states “FREE COFFEE, TOMORROW”. So rather than ordering your coffee right then and there you hold back and walk away with intention of coming back the next day to get your free coffee. The next day you walk in, and the sign is still there in bold “FREE COFFEE, TOMORROW.”
This is exactly how you operate when you procrastinate on a goal or on something you know you should but don’t do it. There is increasing study that the brain has a hard time distinguiushgn what you actually do, and what you say you set out to do. The thing is, tomorrow never shows up. There is interesting info on how the mind works when you actually verbalize your goals, and to put it another way, “positively fantasize” about what you’re going to do tomorrow. What ironically can happen is that by exciting yourself and prepping yourself to “start tomorrow” you actually can negatively impact your chances of taking action tomorrow. Check out what Jeremy Dean, a psychological researcher at UCL London and the owner of psyblog has to say about this:
“The problem with positive fantasies is that they allow us to anticipate success in the here and now. However, they don’t alert us to the problems we are likely to face along the way and can leave us with less motivation—after all, it feels like we’ve already reached our goal.It’s one way in which our minds own brilliance lets us down. Because it’s so amazing at simulating our achievement of future events, it can actually undermine our attempts to achieve those goals in reality."
4. “Nobody is doing it with me”
That might be the exact reason why you need to do everything in your power to move forward on whatever it is deep down inside of you that you know you need to do. The truth is, you are probably a crab in a bucket right now. Read below about “Crabs in a bucket” sourced from urbandictonary:
Used to describe a person (or subculture) that does everything in it’s power to destroy the ambitions of those among them who wish to improve themselves.
It comes from the story of catching crabs in a bucket. When you catch a crab and place him in a bucket, the first thing he’ll try to do is escape. Now, if you put two crabs in a bucket (hence the plural form of ‘Crabs in a Bucket’) and place them in there together, as soon as one tries to climb up out of the bucket the other will grab the escaping crab by the legs and try to escape itself, to which the process gets repeated to the point where NO crabs end up escaping.
Evaluate who is in your life and be ruthless in your discernment about who is supporting you in moving forward in your attempt to better yourself and who is simply “grabbing your legs” and pulling you back down so you don’t escape from you current situation.
5. “I want to, but I’m scared”
I believe it’s a common misconception that anxiousness , nervousness or even a little fear ever dissipates when you step out to perform. Regardless of what you’re contemplating to take the leap of faith in; taking a new job and leaving your old one, stepping on the court against a worthy opponent, starting a diet with no refined carbs, stepping on stage to give a presentation, pressing “publish” to send out your first blog, asking her to marry you, ending a toxic relationship, asking for the sale, or starting a business from scratch. All these things will present nervousness, anxiousness or a little bit of fear regardless of your preparedness, so waiting till it’s extinct to make a decision will only cause more stagnation in your progress of moving forward. A good and rather extreme example of this would be Henry Fonda who as an American pioneer as a film and stage actor in the 1940′s through the 1960′s. To use him as an example and demonstrate that fear never goes away even at a professional level, I’ll quote Steven Pressfield in his book “The War of Art”…..
Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
So, what do you think? Are any of these a life anthem of yours at the moment? I’d love to hear your thoughts and possibly help you ditch these excuses from your life and help you move a little bit closer to your personal goal. Shoot me an email at brianmcfadden@risebar.com!
