Start Bidding Farewell to Excuses

Even the best of intentions will prevent us from achieving goals, achieving success, eliminate procrastination, and much more, because we often weave excuses into the framework of our daily lives. Well, the time has come to learn to alter our behaviors and take control of our lives.

Ahhh.... my kids are all back in school (sigh) and I'm sitting here at my desk (in a blissfully quiet house) reflecting back over the years and thinking how quickly the years have flown by. It struck me how much has changed over the last eight years since that shocking day that changed so many lives and left so many people, myself included, shocked, saddened and alarmed at the inhumanity of our fellow humans on that fateful day of September 11th 2001.

The world today is a different place than it was then, and no doubt your life has also moved on. I had a month old baby, 2-year-old and a 3-year-old and was packing up my home in Australia to move to the U.S. that very day. Needless to say, it was an overwhelming time. But what I do remember very vividly is how the tragedy of 9/11 really caused people to stop and think about what was most important to them.

I met numerous people in the months that followed that told me they'd stopped making excuses for not doing the things they always wanted to do and began living their lives more intentionally. But as intentional as we are when we set our minds to start bidding farewell to excuses, sometimes those excuses have this insidious way of creeping back into our thoughts, our conversations, our relationships and lives.

* I'm too old, or too young and inexperienced
* I'm just not that kind of person
* I'm not a morning person
* I'm too busy, too unfit, too disorganized, too depressed, too (fill in the blank)
* I'm a creature of habit
* My family or spouse or kids or boss or dog or pet fish mightn't like it

I hate to tell you, but there are less than five weeks until 2010. Yep, less than five weeks! And so given that your life is precious, your time is precious and that you won't get another chance to go back and live 2009 again, I'd like to challenge you to start bidding farewell to those excuses which are keeping you from taking the action, and making the changes that you KNOW you need to make to address those issues that niggle and gnaw at you and keep you from enjoying your life as much as you'd like.

Just imagine how you'd feel if, come December 31st this year, you could look back on the intervening months at what you had accomplished with a great sense of pride and achievement. At the end of their lives, people regret the things they didn't do more than the things they did. Likewise, come the end of this year, you will know yourself whether you've given your best to the year just gone, or whether you've allowed excuses to keep you stuck in procrastination, complaint, mediocrity and settling for less than what you want.

Growth doesn't occur when we stay stuck firmly planted in excuses and stories we've created from years gone by that are no longer valid (if they ever were!). Success in this game of life, and I mean real success, requires action and a commitment to constantly challenging the assumptions we are living in and stepping beyond our comfort zone. In doing so, it calls on us to start bidding farewell to excuses and those costly justifications that keep us from doing and being all we aspire to.

We human beings can justify anything we want if we put our minds to it. Certainly that's exactly what the men who hijacked those planes on September 11th did. But you are bigger than that. You know yourself that the results you are getting in life are a direct result of the story you've created (and the excuses those stories have fuelled) and those actions that you've taken (or lack thereof! :))

So, I invite you to take on a goal for the rest of 2009 and leave behind all the 'But's' that have been a shackle around your leg and not allowed you to start bidding farewell to excuses.