NEVER TRADE RESULTS WITH EXCUSES
“I’ve
missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times
I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. I have failed over
and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan
John Mason puts it powerfully when he
writes, ‘don’t spend half your life
telling what you are going to do and the other half explaining why you didn’t
do it.’ I think this is great. I great reason for why we fail is our
inventive capacity with excuses. We don’t like admitting that the reason for
our failure is our refusal to look at alternatives, to see the big picture or
simply, to be response-able. When you use excuses, you give up your power to change
and improve. You can fall down many times, but you won’t be a failure until you
say that someone else pushed you. Above all, believing in God assures you of
being forgiven and of energy called Grace to lift you up. Most importantly
through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, one can shape up and start again.
Remember, Holiness is not in never sinning but in rising up every time we fall.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Stop playing the blame
game, nobody wins this game by the way, and start living your life to the full.
Failures are experts at making excuses. There
are always enough excuses available if you are weak enough to use them. However,
there is no excuse for being full of excuses! When you make a mistake and then
you make an excuse for it, you have made two mistakes. You wasted time and creative
energies when thinking up excuses. Instead, get up and work, think big ideas that
you’ll be proud off. An excuse is a foundation upon which one builds a house of
failure. Most failures are people who are professional at giving excuses for
why they failed and that they are not to blame. Challenges are not problems until
you see them so. See in every difficulty, the fire that purifies gold. Follow the
ant philosophy; if you find a block on your path, try going around it, under it,
over it but don’t you give up. No excuse will ever support you purpose in life.
The person who really wants to do something finds a way, the others find an
excuse. Failures say that success is luck, the successful say that it is focus
plus daily improvement over time. Choose where you belong and block those
excuses. When excuses come, say, ‘Excuse me please, I’ve got to pass!!
