Improving yourself is more a matter of doing something, right? At least that’s what we were being told. But what if I tell you that we can dramatically improve ourselves, transcend our current capacity, increase our chance for success, all by not doing things we already do, things that we find hard to detach from?
You see, the truth of the matter is, we all need change in order to improve. And more often than not our daily dosage of change consists, more than partially, of adding some new self-improvement techniques.
We start eating those vegetables, or start getting up early, or do those push-ups, and call it a day, right? Now, don’t get me wrong, I too love self-improvement taking that direction of movement, however, the real improvement happens when we abandon the good old habits that are holding us back and ultimately stop making excuses.
You will see that by realizing and eventually eliminating these 5 excuses, you can change your mindset for the better, preparing it for improvement, for success.
Excuse 1: The Circumstances
If you ask people why they are not successful yet, chances are that nine out of ten will point to their circumstances. And not only about success, but happiness too.
You see, some of us, if not all, think that success, happiness, improvement of our current situation is all only partially up to us, and more due to the current factors that shape our live, our own circumstances.
We think that if we are not successful it’s because we didn’t had the good start, the great family, didn’t went to college, our boss hates us… If we don’t look like we want to, it’s all due to genetics, right? Due to some current position we are in? And we all think that happiness is present in our lives or not, judging by these factors, these circumstances.
We always need A in order for B to happen, and then we make even more variables, pushing ourselves further from happiness, success, improvement.
Sometimes the circumstances are better as they are. Sometimes, even in the worst of circumstances, great things get done. Sometimes creative work happens in the clutter, productivity in the mess – it’s never up to circumstances, it’s up to us.
“The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that’s the day you start to the top.” (tweet this)
Excuse 2: We are not good enough
If you cannot fix things with a hammer, you need a bigger hammer right? Well… Not quite.
The thing is, and I bet that you will agree with me, that we sabotage our success almost willingly by diminishing our capacity, our potential. We face a bigger challenge, immediately go convincing ourselves that we are not fit for it, not ready, thinking that things are all over our head.
Now I’m not here to write flowery prose and convince you that you can get best at anything over night, but here is an undeniable truth – you have greatness within you; chances are that you have not even found your potential, your talent, more often than not, your passion.
And such things can only be found by exploring, by taking challenges, taking chances, risks… Such things can only be found by dedication, discipline, forming healthy habits…
They are two kinds of people, you see – ones who say “I can” and others who say “I can’t”. The thing is, they are both right.
So don’t let someone else to create your own reality. As Steve Jobs said – don’t let your life be controlled by dogma, by what other people think of you.
If you embed a picture in your mind, you can as well paint it.
Excuse 3: The circle we are into
Living in a rollercoaster of a society, we like to form groups with people that resemble us in some ways, people that we feel comfortable with, from whom we hope to get the push needed in order to improve ourselves. And so it happens, that when things go south, we tend to blame our group, our circle.
You see, same as with circumstances, we are quite convinced that our reality is dictated by the people we are with, or even more by the people we lack into our lives.
And while all of this makes sense to a certain extent, it’s not the game changer. You see, we can control who we let into our lives, into our circle, thus the excuse falls short.
Nowadays it’s so easy to tailor your circle the way you want, since we have communities and tools in abundance.
But no matter how much push you can get out of a group, or a like minded friend, in the end of the day it’s all up to you. If you want to improve yourself, don’t think like extrovert all the time, think like introvert for a change.
Excuse 4: It’s hard
The most frequent excuse that we hear is not that we can’t do it, but that it’s hard. Granted, sometimes we encounter an obstacle down the road, or even want to enroll ourselves into something more complex, and the best way not to try is to label it as too hard.
How many times you had the greatest idea, the perfect plan? How many times you’ve seen your dream girl/guy? How many times you’ve known for sure that if you do it you will succeed? So what did you do? What did we do? Said that it was too hard; too hard to make the idea reality; too hard to get the attention of our dream girl/guy; too hard to walk the road to success.
Chances are it was hard. Chances are it is still hard. But it can be done if we stop making excuses, or even at least we can just try.
Try this: Ask yourself how many things that you’ve done, you considered impossible at the time.
What seems impossible at this moment not necessarily is so. This mindset is usually self-preserving, but try and brake it, change it, stop making excuses, and you will see how easy is to improve yourself.
“Don’t make excuses. Make things happen. Make changes. Then make history.”
– Doug Hall (tweet this)
Excuse 5: How do we start
Procrastinate, right? That’s the thing we love to do the minute we face chance for improvement. We can start tomorrow we say, next Monday. We play on the circumstance card again, and delay things till we are prepared.
Improving yourself is an ever-evolving practice. A concept that doesn’t recognize level of readiness, preparation. We just do it. And practice makes perfection, right? NO! Practice makes only improvement. There is no thing as perfect – we can always better ourselves, you can always improve yourself, surpass your yesterday self.
Change your perception, and start perceiving yourself as the person who you want to be. Don’t think obstacle, think chance for improvement.
By starting to improve yourself, you, the same as I, start to attract other opportunities into our lives, start to attract people that will help us, tune our subconscious mind to detect and embrace possibilities.
But delaying the start for when “better times come“, none of this is possible, and we are trapped into our status quo.
Improving yourself is an ever evolving thing, so you better change your mindset before you start to improve yourself. You need to stop making excuses. Then you can both see great results, while enjoying the whole ride.