Good morning, gang. Okay. Oh, that is very purple isn’t it? Matchy-Matchy. Today I want to talk about flipping the excuses you tell yourself. Now don’t say, “I don’t make excuses”. We all do it. The trick is, learning what excuses you make to yourself because you’re bored and flipping them into something to make you get off your ass and get to work on time or not be late or whatever it is that you make excuses for. So some of the common excuses are: “I’m too tired, the traffic was terrible, oh my God my kids did X-Y-Z, I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough time, I’m not talented enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m too fat, too thin, too old, too late, oh everybody else is doing it, so who am I to do it, if I only had a million dollars, I’d be able to do it”.
Oh my gosh. There are so many excuses that we repetitively tell ourselves. And I think it starts when we’re a lot younger and we make up excuses at home. When your parents says, “have you done all your homework”? Excuse number one comes out. “Did you make your bed”? Excuse number two comes up. And so it starts. So we don’t get onto it early enough to go, no! All those excuses are going to do is, continually set you up to be a failure to yourself. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, diddly squat, how you succeed in terms of other people. What is so important is succeeding for yourself. That’s it. If you continue to make excuses to not do things, or to do things at a subpar level, then all bets are off. Now I’m not talking about producing work that’s not perfect because, let me tell you the excuse of, “oh it’s not good enough”, is a really bad excuse. Done is better than perfect. So that’s a separate one that I have talked about before and I’ll hone in on it again actually.
Done is better than perfect. If you’re using the excuse, “Oh, it’s not perfect”. Which don’t you hate it when all of a sudden, update pops up on your computer. Done is better than perfect. If you’re using the excuse that, “Oh, my book’s not quite perfect, just hang my head in, shame on that one”. Then you are just… Actually you’re letting other people down because, if you’ve created work, you need to get it out there. Okay. But what I want to help you with today is how to flip those excuses. So flip them, okay. So alarm goes off and you think, Oh, I’m too tired to get up and do the washing, go to the gym, make breakfast, do whatever it is that you intend on doing in the morning.
How about you think? “I’m too tired, I’m a little bit tired, I’m no more tired than usual, no, I’ve got this, I can get up”. Don’t go from, “I’m too tired to, Oh my God, I’m a ball of energy”. Because, it won’t work. You will go, “I lied to myself”. And lying to yourself back, many live Facebook months ago, it’s really not a good thing and we need to stop that shit.
Traffic, “I can’t get there because the traffic’s going to be bad. I can’t give a good…” Leave earlier. Okay. “Well, if I didn’t want to get the bad traffic, which way would I go?” Okay, don’t run it off totally.
“I’m not smart enough”. Okay. Well, maybe I’m not feeling smart enough in this particular thing, but what am I smart at? Okay. Dig back into the volts of when you got an A or when you thought you were having conversation with someone that you were like, “Oh my God, I have so got this chaos theory down, pat, I am clever”. Remember that and flip it. You may not feel smart enough in this particular instance, but you are smart enough in something. So grab onto that and run for your life. Okay.
This one’s a big one. [inaudible 00:04:43], I was going to say, especially for chicks, but more and more I’m meeting men that have the same issues. And honestly, I didn’t think guys got this stuff. I didn’t think they had these things happen, but the “I’m too fat, too old, too young, too wrinkly”. Probably the couple. I haven’t heard anyone gone… Oh, actually I have had someone say, “I’m too skinny to do something”. So we’ll go with those ones. Okay. That is the external people. Age is just a number. Remember back a couple of days, J. Lo and Shakira. Sharne, Liza Minnelli. Oh my God, Colonel Sanders didn’t get KFC started till his seventies.
So that age thing is just bullshit. So every time you want to come up with that age excuse, want you to just pick five people that you admire that were older when they did something and flip it. You’re the perfect age. “I’m too old to do it, no, I’m the perfect age to do this because it’s what I’m doing now”. Whatever you’re doing at that time is perfect for you. Okay.
Too fat, too skinny. Okay. How’s that going for Lizzo? Really people? No, gone are the days where your weight is an excuse to do things unless you were in a body building category or boxing in category, and you need to be under a certain weight or over a certain way. That is the only time weight should come into the equation. I struggle with this and I have to say, thank you, for watching these Facebook lives, because that has helped me with this even more. And I was at a pretty good place with it.
So pick if it’s a size, age thing, pick people that you admire and flip it. “They can do it. I can do it”.
If you had a million dollars, you could renovate your house. Yeah. It’s just an excuse because you know what, you could spend $10 on a mat and make yourself feel better. You can start putting $20 away a week to do the renovations you want to do. You could start doing things to inspire you, to get to that position you want to be. Okay.
“I’m not talented enough”. Oh, big one. “I really want to be a singer but, I’m not talented enough”. Maybe you are not meant to be a singer. Have you got another talent? The number of people that spend their childhoods completely focused and totally as someone say, dedicated to doing something talent based and then gets to the point where they are like, “Oh actually no I don’t have enough of that talent”. Find another one because I’ve got to tell you, you will have… If you’ve had the tenacity to do that, you will have the tenacity to do something else. And whatever you’re feeling not good enough in. If you really want it, keep training. People who have never run a day in their life would say, I’m not a talented runner, train and do marathons. There are actors out there that started when they were 80 and they probably went through their life thinking they weren’t talented enough.
So it’s never too late to stop, but you’ve got to hone your craft. And I truly believe, and I talk about this with my X-factor staff. A talent alone is not going to get you anywhere. There is so much more involved in actually getting what you want in any area in life. So not being talented enough is just a crap excuse. With enough work you can achieve miracles.
Okay. I’ve touched on a few of them. What I want you to do for the next 24 hours, 48 hours, however long, keep doing it for life. I’m still doing it for life. Every time you come up with an excuse for a reason to not do something or not do something well enough, or it’s just like, “I’ll just dip my toes in, but not completely commit”. Workout what that excuse was, when you’re journaling that day, write it down and write down what you were thinking, what it brought up for you with that excuse, and then look at how you need to flip it. Is it someone you can look at. Is there a little iddy-biddy maybe microscopic step. With the early one, you might not want to join the 4:30am club like me. I like it. Okay.
How about you start setting your alarm 15 minutes earlier? Okay. Then another 15 minutes. Or have five minutes if you want. You’ll be like: “Oh I’m too tired, Oh, I’ve got enough energy now”, another five minutes. “I’m too tired, I’ve got enough energy now”. Little iddy-biddy steps will help you flip any of these excuses on their head, okay. Have an awesome day. And I will see you all tomorrow. Bye.