Excuse-making is the Language of Failure

When I attended medical school, I fell behind on my bills and rent. I had to meet with a school administrator who worked with landlords.

He asked me why I fell behind; I gave him excuse after excuse, eh said what your plan to catch up is. I told him I hoped that my financial aid would come through and pay the landlord.

It never came, and I had to leave school as a result.

I made peace with not finishing medical school and found a new path.

But it was the first time that I could remember someone calling me on my BS. I learned the world doesn’t give two shots about your excuses.

Make it happen, or get out of the way.

Over the years, you would think I’d learned from that experience but I didn’t. I learned how to make better and more intricate excuses. As a believer, I often would say it wasn’t God’s will when something didn’t go my way.

I’m sure God was shaking his head at me, blaming Him for my lack of effort, planning, and execution.

The moment that I stopped making excuses for good was when I was sitting in a room in Philadelphia, PA; I lived in that room because I could not afford anything else.

I blamed everyone for me being there.

The real culprit, of course, was the man in the mirror. I made BS excuse after excuse, and it landed me in a pest-infested apartment in a rough North Philly neighborhood. This had become my life.

I said no more.

I stopped making excuses for myself.

I am a completely different person than I was back then. I make more than 2x as much and still climbing in my career. I reconciled with my now wife, and we live in Florida. We live well. Life is good, but it didn’t get better until I stopped making excuses.

What are Excuses?

Excuses are the reason you didn’t do something. When you missed school, you needed an excuse so those missed days wouldn’t hinder your advancement. It also created a relationship in your mind that says, “I don’t get punished if I have an excuse.”

That’s might be how a school operates, but not how life works.

Excuses keep you in a mental prison where you have a sense of freedom, but invisible shackles keep you from being your best self. You think your circumstances, challenges, or people are your problem. But they can’t stop you from doing a damn thing.

The Power of Language

When you get good at making excuses, it becomes like a second language. You get fluent, and you connect with other people making the same or similar excuses.

Languages connect us with like-minded people. It’s easier to communicate with people who speak the same as you.

When you develop the language of excuse-making, it connects you to excuse-makers.

I don’t want people I work with to make excuses because we won’t get anything done. So that has to start with me, and no longer making excuses disconnects me from other excuse-makers and connects me to those that make it happen.

What is failure?

Failure has been overanalyzed on here and on countless other platforms.

To fail means to stop. When a person suffers from heart or kidney failure, the organs stop working.

As long as you don’t quit, you can’t fail. That’s my two cents.

Excuses, however, are the language of failure. When you make an excuse, you explain why you didn’t do something.

So inherently, in making excuses, you are waving the white flag.

You’ve given up because you’re talking like a failure.

That last sentence sounds harsh, but I needed words like that to turn my life around.

Even though I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world with the most opportunities and a free market to exchange goods and services, I was whining about my life. I made excuses for not having a better car, job, or place to live, and talking like that communicated that I’d given up on having any of those things.

When you talk like a failure, you eventually fail.

What is the way forward?

I’m a recovering excuse maker; I still have to catch myself from time to time, to be honest. Maybe this connects with you, and you want to stop making excuses. Here is what I did:

1. Understand no one is smarter or more gifted than you — I had this realization riding the train to work one day when I was struggling badly; I’m better than this

The reality was I thought others had an advantage over me, but they didn’t; they just made the most of what they had, which is all you need to do to piece yourself up.

2. Stop making excuses — this is self-explanatory. No one cares, and the people who say they care are lying. Seriously, stop doing it.

3. Stop Tolerating Excuses from Others — This might take some time, and you can do this. Stop accepting excuses from everyone around you. When someone you know starts with that, ask them, “so what are you going to do about it” They might get upset, stomp away, or hang up the phone. But start making your life a no-excuses zone.

4. Create a Goal for Yourself — Seasoned excuse-makers lack concrete goals and timelines to achieve them. Start creating at least one goal for yourself and a deadline to get it. This exercise starts choking out the excuse-making part of you

5. Do Not Stop Until you Get your Goal — The more you win, the less you will want to make excuses.

Change the way you think about the excuses you are making valid and ask yourself:

Are they valid?
Are they helpful?
Are these excuses taking me toward my goal or away from them?

The answers will surprise you.