10 Excuses You’re Making That Will Make You Live Life in Regret
The (not so) little roadblocks you put on yourself that prevent you from excelling.
A picture of a bear who does not make excuses
If you are not as successful as you want to be, chances are it is your own fault.
Yes, there are always external factors, and maybe you’re still young, but along the way, there are little excuses and bad decisions we make that prevent us from attaining our goals.
As time goes on, these excuses pile up, and here you are, still exactly where you started wondering why nothing has changed.
It’s time to stop making excuses and take charge of your life. That way, you don’t end up on your deathbed regretting the past.
1. I will start tomorrow
The most famous excuse and the one that will be the end of us all. Stop putting off what you truly want to do until tomorrow.
Why wait until New Year’s to start losing weight?
Why wait until next month to start your business?
All of the pushing back is wasting what little time you actually have on this earth. You’re dying!
Start today. Right now. Go!
2. This is too hard for me
You can always learn new skills. The beautiful thing about humans is that we are knowledge-absorbing, and knowledge-creating creatures.
If you really want to do something, as long as it doesn’t break the laws of physics you can figure out how. The possibility is not the issue — your effort is.
Even if this is actually too hard for you, you can always hire someone else to do it.
The same excuses you are making, are the same excuses that the person who is where you want to be laughs at.
3. It’s too late to start
The number of people who thought it was too late to buy Tesla stock, and then missed out on 50x gains…
The same situation happened with Amazon, Google, and most recently, Nvidia.
20 years ago, many people said it was impossible for a new car company to be successful. In fact, until Tesla came around, no American car manufacturer had gone public since 1956 which was when Ford did so!
People said it was too late, and Tesla proved them wrong. That’s only one example…
You can prove them wrong too.
4. They’re already doing it
McDonalds might have the highest revenue out of any fast food chain, but guess what… Starbucks, Subway, and many other chains still make billions.
There can be more than one.
You can find a different niche within the industry (although it’s often not necessary).
The differences could be as little as the approach to customer service, or the product is just a little different…
It can still succeed.
5. They failed, so I will too
Timing and execution are everything. It happens very often when a company launches, and is simply too early. Years later, the technology is cheaper, or the market has changed and now a very similar business excels.
Do you remember AskJeeves?
They were a search engine where you type any question and it would answer your question. Now Google has a similar feature, and ChatGPT does it with ease.
What about SixDegrees?
Yeah, you probably don’t remember them. They were the original social network!
Another person’s failure does not determine your fate.
6. The odds are against me
If the odds aren’t against you then it’s typically too good to be true. If the odds weren’t against you then chances are everyone would be doing what you are trying to do.
The odds may be against you, but because of your know-how, and a particular set of skills (yes you, Liam Neeson), you can make this work.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” — Wayne Gretsky
7. No one from here makes it
Your environment truly does matter. 10 years ago, it would have been nearly impossible to make a tech company successful if you weren’t in Silicon Valley.
It would be hard to recruit talent, and get funding, but some companies still succeeded.
Sometimes you can’t control your environment, but what you can control is your attitude and your effort.
Don’t let your environment be your downfall.
Plus… you can always move! Depends on how badly you want to achieve your goals.
8. No one believes in me
The only person that needs to believe in you is yourself. Many of the people who have success today were surrounded by people who doubted them.
Those people told them to quit when they were down because they didn’t know better, or they told them to not even start because their idea was crazy, or they doubted their talent.
But, those same people believed in themselves, and look at them now.
9. I’m too committed to what I’m doing now
Unless you are working 16-hour days, then you still have time to do more work. I say 16 hours because I won’t recommend that anyone sacrifice their sleep.
With that being said, when you are doing something you love, sometimes sacrificing sleep is worth it.
For most of you though, you are working 35–45 hour weeks. If you don’t want to regret your life, spend the extra time each week towards achieving your goals.
You have to make sacrifices to get to where you want to be.
Don’t let time management be your downfall.
10. I don’t do well with failure
Very few people do well with failure. It’s a skill that comes with practice, and unfortunately, you have to fail in order to practice…
Failing sucks, and it should not be glorified. You should avoid failures at all costs.
But, it will happen, and when it does happen, all you got to do is analyze what went wrong and keep moving!
If you avoid failure your whole life you will literally not do anything.
You might fail at walking tomorrow and fall down the stairs…
Just saying.
Conclusion
The point of this article is that excuses are, for the most part, a waste of time. If you ask elderly people what they regret, it’s typically not giving something a shot. Not taking a risk (or not spending time with family - balance).
You don’t want to be on your deathbed, regretting that you made excuses your whole life.
So, listen to point number one, and start right now.
Close your laptop, and go start whatever it is that your excuses are preventing you from doing.
Thanks for reading
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