According to University of Florida researchers1, there are both advantages and disadvantages to excuse-making. Excuses can actually be beneficial if the end result is a sheltered self-esteem, low anxiety and depression, and even a boosted immune system.
This in turn can boost self-control and focus, resulting in better performance. These types of excuses are straight lies I was sick! Making a change in our excuse-making behavior may be just as difficult as keeping a resolution, if not more challenging.
Whereas excuse making is often a subconscious process, breaking a habit requires conscious effort. However a region of the prefrontal cortex known as the infralimbic IL cortex may hold the key to breaking old habits, as shown by experiments on rats.
And why they resurface? This interesting study showed that a specific part of our brain is devoted to habit-forming, showing that even semi-automatic behaviors blurting out an excuse is ultimately under our control. How can we fine-tune our self-regulation to be more aware of our semi-automatic behaviors? Or maybe we could even stick to a general theme, rather an a specific goal.
Action Step: Create a milestone map. Your milestones are still significant steps, but they help shift your mindset to focus on the smaller things you need to do that will accumulate toward completing your long-term goal. Doing this will help you start to recognize the necessary steps toward achieving your goal.
Not only can you learn what not to do when you make a mistake, but you can also analyze what went wrong and figure out how you can do better in the future. All mistakes are learning opportunities , no matter how big or small the mistake may be. Often, trial and error is the best way to work something out.
During one interview, you make a comment that seemed innocuous at the time, but the interviewer seemed put off, and in hindsight, you can see why. I would be willing to bet that you would not repeat that comment during your next interview. Instead, you will take it as an important life lesson that just learned. For more on this, read these powerful life lessons. Action Step: Determine what specific action led to the mistake. In the job interview example, were you nervous and responded too quickly to a question without stopping to gather your thoughts?
Rather, focus on your strengths and the things that you have to offer that other people do not. Ask questions that make you think more deeply about your life. If you consider your lack of experience to be a weakness in your goal of learning a new language, the only way you can face this head-on is to gain the necessary experience to feel like speaking a new language is something that you can eventually accomplish.
Rather than focusing on your lack of experience, focus on your drive and ambition to become a fluent speaker. This means writing down your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are relevant to achieving your goal. This will help you recognize your weaknesses but allow you to take your focus off of them as you are also looking at the factors that you have in your favor.
To get started, check out this guide on how to do a SWOT analysis for your personal life. Realize that you have the power to change. You just have to be motivated to do so. If you don't feel like you can do it on your own, seek help from other people in order to achieve your goals and get the results you are looking for. Never think that you simply cannot change an aspect of your life. For example, it is within your power to lose weight.
Action Step: Be proactive without expecting to see a result. This will only be setting yourself up for disappointment.
Trust the process. When you are faced with a challenge, do you feel like you can handle it or do you come up with some excuses to avoid it?
Perhaps you have a tendency to doubt your own abilities to rise to the challenge and overcome the hardships that life throws your way. Believing in yourself plays an important role in whether or not you are able to achieve the results you want in life.
You have to be able to envision yourself reaching your final goal in order for you to believe it will actually happen. Action Step: Take a few minutes to list the things that you are good at doing and the successes you have had in the past. Then, recognize that everything you listed is evidence that you can, in fact, succeed. Sometimes we forget how successful we have been in the past.
Literally visualize what it would look like and feel like to achieve your goal and have success. Notice as much detail as possible, such as your clothes, the look on your face, people cheering for you, the weather, the sounds of other runners around you, and anything else you can think of.
Imagine your feelings as you are completing your first marathon. Doing this can add some motivation to your agenda, as you will want to actually be able to feel those feelings of accomplishment. Action Step: Get comfortable, close your eyes, and imagine what you would see if your dream was realized. Practice doing this any time you feel a dip in motivation.
Accept your mistakes and know that other people are willing to accept your mistakes as well, especially if you own up to them and learn from them. This is something that happens to everyone, even the most successful people.
People often have a tendency to dwell on their mistakes, but doing so will damage your self-confidence. Dwelling on your mistakes can lead to feelings of anger, frustration, and stress, which can then lead to procrastination. If there is nothing you can do to undo your error in judgement, just do your best in the future to do better. Think of a boxer who gets hit during a boxing match. Does he or she stop to dwell on what they did wrong? Or do they get up and keep moving toward their goal of winning?
Action Step: Next time you make a mistake, find the lesson in it and move on. Analyze your decisions, correct your behavior, and get back on the right path. If you are used to coming up with excuses to get out of doing things, this is a habit that can be changed.
Think about what you are actually trying to avoid when you make an excuse. Are you avoiding doing extra work? Or maybe you don't want to give up your free time or move around your priorities? Try to figure out what you are really trying to get away from and address it head on. You can stop making excuses and start getting the results you want if you are able to have a clear vision of what you want for the future.
Know which excuses are worth falsifying with factual evidence, and which painless excuses can be left to ferment. When you do find proof against whichever excuses come your way from others , present it in a way which is not demeaning or hurtful to the person. Remember, you have to keep their naivety toward the facts of the matter in mind. Examples of proof can include showing someone that working out every day is possible even with the busiest of schedules, or that the timeline at work is in fact a reasonable one breaking down all the tasks and reverse engineering estimated times for each.
You will need to become good at narrowing down to specific causes of excuses on your journey to stopping the faulty ones. As best you could, try to lay down the evidence for your subject to follow toward a realization you aim for them to end up on, rather than forcing facts into their understanding without allowing them to own their discoveries themselves. Once both of you have an understanding of what is possible — thereby contradicting the causes of the excuses you were presented with — begin to explore the reasons why these excuses were thought of in the first place.
As you serve to dissolve their naivety toward the facts of the matter at hand, they will be perceptive to a desire to improve their mental strength going forward. Find reasons for why they came up with the excuses that they did.
Realize the role that not recognizing the full picture played in their premature decision to believe an invalid excuse. The key to eliminating future excuses seems to be the elimination of the habits that drive the formation of those excuses.
Then, take a step further and work with them to eliminate the habits which led them to believing those falsehoods. Though the debunking of an excuse can limit its specific repetition in the future, to disregard the habits at play entices other excuses to form in other areas of life.
A successful debunking of an excuse presents an opportunity for the individual to learn the driving forces behind their adherence to that excuse. Ensure to limit the repeat-ability of such behaviors, rather than just debunk them on a case by case basis.
Focusing on the wrong driver can cause your motivation to quickly dip and create excuses to give up. When you stay connected with your motivators and review them regularly to ensure they are still relevant to you, you put yourself in the best position to follow through on your goals.
You could also work with a life coach who could help you to create a plan of action and maintain your momentum. Coaching has always been a dream job for me. One of those 'if I won the lottery' dreams. Even as a teenager, my dream job was to help people through challenges and to achieve great things.
Back then coaching didn't have a name and i definitely didn't believe it would be possible to make a living through it. As I got older, it remained a distant dream until I reached my final year of university and decided to go for it. What is motivation?
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