What’s Your Excuse For Not Changing?
What will your excuse be today? Maybe you think that you are too old / old to learn Chinese, or that your goals can wait? Perhaps you are not motivated enough to aim for this goal that you have set yourself so enthusiastically because you start to tire and doubt? It is not a question of fear, of ability or of self-confidence, no; it is all the fruit of the excuses you give yourself, the reasons your mind makes up and on which you rely.
We are all afraid because it is a natural emotion. It is true that fear often blocks us, paralyzes us and therefore prevents us from moving forward, from advancing towards what we covet. However, it is not fear that prompts us to throw in the towel; this is indeed an act that we carry out by our own will, hiding behind multiple excuses that do not need to be. Fear leads us to these excuses, as does insecurity; thus, we redirect our feelings to the extended world of apologies.
Imagine: you are trying to be more responsible, and you are thinking about leaving your job for another, because the one you hold today does not allow you to flourish. So you are aiming for a clear goal, but you are missing something. Maybe you have doubts as to whether you will be able to make it happen, or maybe you are starting to tell yourself that it won’t be worth it. In reality, you do not realize it, but all you do at that time is procrastinate.
Procrastinating is putting off until the next day what you can do the same day, but for various reasons, you decide to postpone until later. So that means that in fact, you are not as engaged as you might think. When you really want something, you try to get to it as quickly as possible. There are no “buts” that hold; maybe tomorrow you will not have the opportunity that today offers you. You get what you want by moving the pawns, not by standing there and looking at the game board passively.
Imagine that you have a character that causes problems in your relationships with others, even at work. A lot of times that caught the attention of people, so they pointed it out to you, to which you respond: “yes, I have to change the way I treat the people around me”. Consider that other people are right, and that you don’t really like the way you act on certain occasions either. However, over time, things stay the way they are. The big question is: “why?”
The answer lies in the fact that your mind constantly pushes back to “tomorrow”; however, when the next day arrives, you forget what you had to do. You are not really committed to change because you may be lazy, and you may even consider yourself deep down that you are past the age to change certain aspects of yourself. However, this is a lie; age can condition, of course, but our thoughts even more so.
Surely you can hear phrases like “nothing is useful that I try to do so because I am not getting the desired results”. However, have you really put in the effort, or are you already anticipating what can happen? Sometimes we are not sincere with ourselves, and we justify our behavior based on things that did not even happen ; this happens because we are not really engaged, as we mentioned earlier.
The problem with humans is that sometimes they mistakenly think they are doing something useful when in reality they are not doing anything to achieve what they want. Each excuse makes us feel better, victims of circumstances that prevent us from achieving what we want. However, this is a big lie. So ask yourself: do you want to achieve what you say, or are you just saying it?
In life, there are changes that we are really panicking, regardless of whether we were imposing them ourselves. Not only when we try to carve out our personality, but also when we embark on a new adventure, like going back to school and going back to the university benches or quitting our job to do what really allows us to flourish. However, everything is a question of desire, will and effort.
Most of the limits that you consider to be real exist only in your mind, and you can do away with them if you confront them with reality. There is no point in lying to yourself, or even lying to others. If you don’t want to go to something, don’t. But when, on the other hand, you want to reach a very precise point, do it without manners, without finding any excuse, without procrastinating, without doubting … Things are done without you thinking too much about it. Because when our mind begins to fill with ideas, it then blocks us to the point of completely paralyzing us.
Images by Sofía Bonati
