The Best,Worst Excuse
Unsuccessful people refuse to commit to change. They make excuses.
It’s easier to make excuses than to commit to change.
Why?
An excuse, by definition, is an attempt to lessen the blame for a failure or offense. It is also an attempt to defend, justify, rationalize, or explain an action and not take personal responsibility for the consequences that occurred as a result.
It is pointing the finger at someone or something rather than pointing at ourselves.
It is a denial of the truth and the perpetuation of a half-truth, or an outright lie.
One of my mentors, Chris Robinson, has a great quote regarding excuses:
“The best excuse is the worst excuse.”
Why?
“Because we accept it, and believe it to be true.”
Making excuses is easy.
We make excuses to shift the blame, shame, and guilt we are feeling for failing in some way. It’s a convenient way to shift the conversation from our own responsibility for an uncomfortable outcome to focus on another person or something that was out of control. We don’t want to look like a failure, so we blame someone or something else to lessen the blow to our self-esteem.
Psychology Today says it this way:
“Since we are capable of experiencing shame and guilt, we want to lessen the perceived and potential blame from others or any self-blame we attach to an offense or fault. An excuse shifts causality from a more threatening source that can impact one's self-esteem to a less central one.”
In short, we play the blame game.
One of the most beloved characters in the TV sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes”, was Sergeant Schultz. Whenever Col. Hogan and his fellow POWs would sneak out of the prison camp to engage in espionage against the Nazis, Schultz often saw more than he should. Not wanting to get into trouble, or fearful he would be shipped to the Eastern Front if he was found to be inadequate, he would often respond with, “I see nothing! I hear nothing!”
It's easier to deny what we see is true, especially if the outcome puts us in a bad light.
So, we make an excuse.
Excuses leave us where we are, as we are, unchanged.
From a personal growth perspective, we’re denying our role in the failure and attempting to cast the responsibility elsewhere. When we do that, we also close our eyes to the lesson life is trying to teach us. This sets us up to go through this same (or a similar) experience again until we take ownership of the outcome, and our role in it, and learn the lesson life is trying to teach us.
Making an excuse is choosing to remain stuck.
George Eastman launched the first successful roll-film camera, the Kodak, in 1888. From there, Eastman went on to build a photo film empire that lasted until the early 2000s. In 1976, Eastman’s company commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the United States. By 1996, Kodak controlled over two-thirds of the global market share in photographic film. The company was worth more than $31 billion, making Kodak the fifth most valuable brand in the world.
Kodak expanded beyond photographic film into the video market introducing 8mm, Beta, and VHS format videotapes, along with a line of floppy disks for computers. They launched a line of all-weather cameras that could take photographs in depths up to eight feet of water. Kodak also created drop-in film canisters allowing unexposed film to be safely removed from a camera.
However, Kodak failed to embrace the rise of digital technology and stuck with its “tried and true” approach to still and moving pictures. As rivals continued to enter the market, Kodak failed to pivot, never finding a profitable way to move beyond photographic film. It was delisted from the Dow 30 in 2004 and continued to lose market share before ultimately filing for bankruptcy protection in 2012.
Interestingly enough, Kodak invented the world’s first digital camera in the early 1980s, but the leadership shelved the project after learning the camera could take pictures without film, a mainstay of their current, soon-to-be-obsolete, business model.
Kodak chose to make excuses, citing a fear of cannibalizing its own film business, rather than embrace new technologies that were changing the photographic and motion picture landscape.
The best excuse is the worst excuse because you accept it and believe it to be true.
We also see this today with the debacle that is the southern border of the United States. Both political parties point fingers, blaming each other rather than coming together to actually solve the problem, while millions of migrants continue to illegally surge across an open border seeking their path to the American dream.
The long-term impact on the American taxpayer, as well as the infrastructure systems of countless cities across the United States impacted by illegal immigration, will not be realized for years to come. The cost will be staggering, and may well bankrupt the nation.
The best excuse is the worst excuse because you accept it and believe it to be true.
So, why do we make excuses?
We are creatures of habit, comfortable with the way things are. It is easier to make an excuse, to remain as we are, rather than take responsibility and be forced to change how we think, behave, and choose to act. Making excuses is easier than holding ourselves accountable, or allowing other people to hold us to account for our actions.
We care more about how we are perceived in the moment rather than how we will be perceived in the future. We don’t want to look like a failure, so we make excuses rather than admit we messed up, learn from our mistakes, and use that to learn, grow, and improve.
Making excuses is easier than committing to change.
Let me wrap up today’s teaching with three ways you can stop making excuses and start committing to change.
First, you’ve got to acknowledge and accept responsibility. You’ve got to own your mistakes and failures. It is easy to celebrate and accept your role in the WINs, but it is also important to accept your role in failure and learn the lesson it teaches. Denying your role in failure is lying to yourself, and to those you should be accountable to, and that is a character flaw that needs to be corrected.
Unless and until you admit your mistakes, and your role in it, you’re never going to learn, grow, and improve in that area.
Secondly, you’ve got to set some SMART goals for yourself. SMART goals are objectives or outcomes that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. Make sure you break down your longer-term goals into smaller, more manageable steps. This allows you to experience meaningful progress along the way, celebrating the little wins, and compounding them over time until the longer-term goal is realized.
Here’s an example. A good friend of mine set a goal to lose 100 pounds in 12 months. That’s a LOT of weight to lose. He broke his longer SMART goal into “chunks” he could manage. His short-term objective, each week, was to lose 2 pounds. That’s just over a quarter pound a day. My friend met his long-term SMART goal in just 48 weeks and has maintained that weight loss for the past ten years.
The third success tip is to surround yourself with good accountability partners. You need a support system comprised of people who will encourage, challenge, and cheer you to success. This could be family members, friends, or colleagues who will not let you make excuses and will hold you accountable to what you committed to do.
Remember, the best excuse is the worst excuse because you accept it and believe it to be true.
The best way to get rid of the best, worst excuse is to own your failure.
Nobody’s perfect, and that includes you.
So, get over yourself, forget your ego, admit you blew it, learn from it, and don’t do it again.
Unsuccessful people refuse to commit to change. They make excuses.
Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do sometimes, or not at all.
Successful people don’t make excuses. They commit to change.
Which person do you want to be?