No Excuses

Some of you will know that I am in the process of challenging myself to make some serious lifestyle changes right now. I am doing a twelve week fitness challenge. You can read about that on my posterous blog. During this process I am rediscovering some long held but long suppressed beliefs. Mainly that the only excuses that exist are the ones you give yourself. If you hold yourself accountable and seek others to hold you accountable then there are no excuses at all.

What do I mean by that? About 20 years ago I was a direct sales person. I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners in the valleys of South Wales, door to door. Not an easy job by any measure. Long hours, lots of rejection, commission only. The guy who ran the area office had a sign on his desk, long wooden sign with a brass plaque. On that sign were the words “Now Tell Me Why You Can”. His point was that he didn’t care for your excuses. If you wanted to take the day off he didn’t care what your excuse was or what reason you were using to give yourself permission. He only wanted to know why you could do things.

When we set goals if we don’t share them we are avoiding making ourselves accountable. When someone like Chris Brogan (who I feel is a very positive inspiration for me) share that he has a vision of having the Brogan ranch, along the lines of Skywalker ranch in a few years, I don’t see that as bragging, or boasting. I see that as goal setting. He is making himself accountable to us. He is removing the opportunity for excuses. As entrepreneurs it is all too easy to make excuses for not realizing our visions,  a downturn economy, a client that doesn’t “get it”, a conference that didn’t turn out to be the opportunity you thought.

These excuses are what hold us back, they maybe perfectly valid “reasons” in our head, they may even make sense when we say them out loud to others but they are excuses nonetheless. Instead we should re-evaluate what we were aiming for originally and try and understand what diverted us.  Look for new paths to our goals and execute on them. The additional benefit of announcing your goals to your network is that when things hit a bump they are their to help you figure out how you get over or around it. So instead of giving your network an excuse you ask them for help, not an easy thing to do but often necessary.

So what excuses are you giving yourself that are holding you back?

image used under creative commons by vandys