Excuses, excuses, excuses. No mistake about it, we ALL use 'em. Whether we like to admit it or not, we find ways each and every day to slip 'em in wherever they're needed most....to fit US.Oh sure, we tend to attempt to disguise them as reasons but deep inside, we know the truth. They're just a BS way of gettin' in, out or around something. Something we did, didn't do, should be doing or shouldn't be, but any way you look at them, they're just an escape of sorts.
Doesn't really fix anything, just postpones things for a while. Hopefully until we can come up with a new excuse that sounds a little more legitimate and fits the situation better. Weird thing is, if we already know this is the case, why do we continue to make up excuses, knowing full well that nobody is really gonna buy 'em, especially us?
I'm sure you've heard the ol' saying, "Excuses are like assholes, everybody's got 'em and they ALL stink!" Sorry to sound so crude but I truly believe that this basically says it all. You ain't buyin' it, I ain't even buyin' it so at that point, why bother to sell it?
Seemingly they make us feel a bit better, a little less like a failure. Somehow thinking of it as more of a reason than an excuse tends to make everything ok. Like it was completely out of our hands, nothin' we could do about it, not OUR fault. Yeah, right.
Don't get me wrong here, every once in a while these excuses or reasons as the case may be are actually legit and hopefully they are believable enough to allow us to slide by but more than likely, they'll just be looked upon as another BS excuse. I guess when you cry wolf so many times, nobody believes you any more and such is the case with excuses.
The worst ones are when you know that the only person that will even hear the excuse.... is YOU, in your head. That's when you begin to hover around that fine line. The line between an excuse and outright just lying to yourself.
Even as you're conjuring up the most creative reason you can think of, the other side of your brain is already sayin' bullshit! Yet, you can still somehow manage to eek it out, to rationalize it, albeit with a sheepish inner grin of sorts, knowing that if you don't even believe it, then who the hell else would.
Is any of this actually helping us to feel better in any way, helping to resolve conflicts? I'd have to think so or wouldn't we just stop this silly inner dialogue altogether? Maybe. Maybe not.
For some reason we still hang on to the mentality that it's gonna work this time. This time it's actually legit, no BS, the real deal. But we know in our hearts that it's not and so the torment begins.
Do we make excuses because it's easy? Easier than facing the truth. Easier than having to follow through on whatever it is we're supposed to be doing. Easier than facing the fact that we blew it, we made a mistake, did something wrong and now we have to face the music? Hmmmm......
Perhaps excuses are ego driven and created in an effort to save our pride? Ego and Pride, the Evil Twins! Either of these can take you down but get 'em both working in tandem and it's Dooms Day for sure. They will cause you do things that you already know you shouldn't but in an effort to save yourself from looking like a fool, they kick in and who knows what's gonna happen from there. Best of luck to you.
It's funny how we think all of our excuses, ooops, reasons are for real but the minute someone else tries to lay one on us we don't even begin to entertain the thought that it could be the truth. And if that's the case, why the hell do we continue to expect others to believe us? Oh yeah, it's because they're all amateurs and I'm a pro. A professional excuse maker, now THAT'S some kinda fancy title.
I mean, with all my experience at making excuses for everything, why I can't do this, can't do that, I'd have to be considered a Pro by now. Correct? Thank you.
My excuses run the full spectrum, they fit pretty much all occasions and can be used in just about any situation you can think of. They're basically universal. They can be used for both good AND evil. In fact, most of them tend to do more harm than good. Yikes!
The more I think about it, most of mine seem to be used in such a way as to save me from failure. No doubt I, like most everyone, have a fear of failure. Not sure if it's more or less present than everyone elses but never the less, it's there and it never lets me forget it's there either.
I'm sure it started from when I was a kid and doing something wrong or not as well as I should have would lead to trouble of some sort. Whether it was a scolding or a spanking, either way failing at anything wasn't gonna turn out to be a pleasant experience.
No doubt looking like a failure in front of my peers also played into it as time went on but I still have to think that it started even earlier than that. Nobody wants to look like a dufus in front of their friends but they're not gonna kick your butt like your Dad will! That's a fear of failure.
I kinda had a built in excuse for quite awhile but I had to let that go about four years ago. That's about the time I quit drinking. I gotta admit, it was nice havin' a default reason for failing. Basically it's not my fault, by default. If (and when) I screwed up on anything, I could always say, "Oh, I was drunk when I did that, that's why I f'd it up" and for the most part, I was drunk (or worse) most every waking moment of every day and so it was pretty damn convenient. Came in handy on lots of occasions.
Unfortunately I had to quit drinking and when I did, I had to say goodbye to my ready made excuse. Which really sucks as now I have to be so much more creative.
Perhaps by no longer drinking, it's also made it much more difficult for me to get these excuses past my on board BS Detector. Ah, no wonder they're not workin' for me anymore. I'm startin' to call myself out on my own BS. That's not good. Isn't that someone elses job?
I guess not. Apparently it's up to me to face my own music and live up to my own standards. Damn it, I was hoping it was gonna be easier than that.
I sure wish they had some kind of an online store, like an "Excuses R Us" type of thing where you could just download some ready made excuses, narrowed down into different categories like "I didn't say that", "I didn't mean that", I didn't do that", "I was drunk when that happened", basically excuses to cover all the different possibilities.
Hmmmm? Maybe I'll start a Membership Site as a way of creating some passive residual income. After all, I'm a Pro at making up excuses, so it should be no problem to look back through my vast BS Library and jot down a few thousand of 'em.
Then I can just submit new ones monthly as a way of adding value to the Site and giving my customers what they really need. This is beginning to sound like a winner already. I mean, who on earth doesn't love (and NEED) excuses and to have them ready for instant download and covering every conceivable circumstance, I can already smell the cash in my Pay Pal account from here!
Who'd a thought that all these years of making up excuses (lying to myself) could turn out to be a money maker? Not me, that's for sure.
Hey, wait a second. What if I go through all the work of setting up the Website, buying a Domain, setting up Hosting, getting an Auto Responder configured, creating new content and everything else that goes into building a business, not counting all the expense involved and then the entire thing tanks? That would totally suck!
Well, as it turns out, I'm kinda too busy anyway, I mean with all I've got goin' on, you know, all the stuff I'm doin', all the things I have scheduled in the near future. Besides, you know how it is, you never know what might come up that could take away even more of my free time and then what would I do? I don't have enough time as it is now, how could I ever hope to run a new website, let alone on auto pilot. So much for that idea, just ain't gonna work.
Phew, that was a close one! Good thing I'm such an Excuse Pro, sure saved me again from an impending failure.
If you can relate to making excuses of your own, real or not, I'd enjoy hearing about it and if you enjoyed this Post, I'd appreciate it if you'd share it with your friends.
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