To Overcome an Excuse

Excuses involves the second strongest emotion that there is. Fear. It is important to start here first. If fear is not looked at when someone is stuck in the excuse then a solution for the problem may be attempted, but no long lasting change will occur.

Fear will always be the same as light and dark will always be. When you turn on a light how far does the darkness go? Not to far. Waiting for the time to come back. Fear involves all other emotions that provides for someone to be stuck. It is natural and can be embraced, and examined, or ignored, repelled and cause stuck-ness.

To overcome fear, there are a few paradoxes. When examining the reasons you fear growing it is like giving light to excuses you are attempting to avoid. This is a necessary step though. It allows you to do a cost benefit analysis. Because when the pain of not changing is greater then the fear of changing then the healthy change will win out.

This is one way many people overcome their excuses, they reach a level that the pain is too great not to do something about the situation. The problem is that this is another form of ignoring the fear until the situation cannot be denied any longer. The other problem is this can cause the unhealthy coping mechanisms of neurosis and other compulsive behavior just to avoid looking at the stuck-ness.

A healthier way is:
1) Involve a 3rd party (trusted)
2) Look on paper or verbally explore
3) Brainstorm about all the options
4) Embrace the fear of the situation (skill that warrants more discussion later)
5) Put together an option and commit
6) Set up a time to re-visit
7) Have a plan to involve the trusted 3rd party individual during the execution
8) Fail forward- Fail forward - Fail forward (John C. Maxwell's book is a great reference of this topic)

Did I mention Fail Forward, the reason most excuses occur is that people have the fear of failure, if like fear you embrace it as a part of the process then you are getting results not actual failures. The only way to fail permanently is to quit. "A body in motion tends to stay in motion" go and fail a little you will be unstuck over the initial excuse.

Joshua Andrus
www.hiresite.info