Sunday Story...Excuses

“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.”

I have a pocket full of excuses, both mine and the ones I hear every day. There is no shortage of excuses anywhere in the world for any endeavor. The list is long and very imaginative. And they can be used to rationalize just about any failure to perform or even to attempt.

I am not going to catalog the parade of excuses here although I have to admit to being highly amused by many of them. The fact is simple: if you want to have an excuse for not doing something it won’t be hard to find one or two or one for everyday of the week. The problem arises when you employ a year of excuses and look down at the growing belly hanging over your belt, or your continuing health problems, or your poor financial condition. Those excuses are building a house of failure. Those excuses are an anchor tethering you to the bottom of an ocean of despair and desperation. Those excuses are killing you.

Here is my favorite excuse: “Everything in moderation.” Really? Heroin in moderation? Bank Fraud in moderation? Meth in moderation? Ask Lance Armstrong…a little blood doping in moderation? Maybe a bee sting for those of you allergic? Does that epi-pin come in a moderate size? How about a little pesticide in your cereal? It’s in moderation! Most things are not good in moderation. Everything in moderation is an excuse for being non-compliant on your diet, exercise program or attitude. How about your bad attitude…OK…in moderation? Really?

We see this a lot around food…you are lactose intolerant but anything in moderation, yes? How is your bellyache? Moderate? How about the brain fog you get after eating gluten? Moderate? I mean you can’t tell me to eat dairy in moderation when one bite will start the process of my intestinal distress. Everything in moderation is the worst thing you can tell yourself. Just a little bit won’t hurt, right? I mean everything in moderation! NOOOOOO! Not everything in moderation, nothing in moderation…just don’t do it…don’t eat sugar, not one bite, not one because it’s Halloween and you love peanut butter m&m’s or peeps on Easter and you always have to eat some of Aunt Jane’s fudge and we wouldn’t want to offend her even though a lifetime of eating fudge has, well, let’s not go there shall we?

We are going into what I refer to as the candy season…Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years are all going to pile temptation after temptation upon you. If you take the moderation approach you will still end up with that house of Failure on January 2nd and a New Year’s resolution that is going to look a lot like every other year’s resolution. Don’t go there. Just SAY NO.
This leads us to the real point:
“Today I will do what other people won’t so Tomorrow I can do what other people can’t.”
Results are the bricks that create the foundation of a house of success. So go out and start building that house.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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