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The secret to overcoming any excuse… August 21, 2006

… from anyone, anytime. Including your own excuses that cripple your motivation.

Everyone seems to want more motivation. Often I hear from people that some days they just can’t seem to get out of bed, go to the gym, or eat healthy food. Yet those same people don’t connect the excuses they use to their lack of motivation.

There is a very easy method that you can used to immediately drain the power from any excuse you have (or, for everyone in sales, any excuse you are given by someone else).

This will work with _every_ excuse. Though be aware that once you reduce the excuse, that does not necessarily mean you are motivated. You have only taken the hand brake off, you still need to press the accelerator.

Before I explain how to nullify an excuse, I have to explain a little about the structure of an excuse and how it hamstrings motivation. Every excuse can be described in the form of:

Not action because of excuse

This can be said in many different ways, but can all be boiled down to that structure. Some examples are:
“I can’t go to the gym because I’m tired.”
“I would like to go to the gym but I’m too tired.”
“I’m too tired to go to the gym.”

Now the secret here is to change the relationship between action and the excuse. With the examples above there is a direct relationship between the action and the excuse and the excuse stops the action.

I’ll give you another example:

“I can’t go to the gym because I’m sitting on the couch.”

Now if you are like most people, you might start to wonder about the validity of the excuse. I should go to the gym because I’m sitting on the couch. This example starts to show how the excuse - any excuse - is in no way required to be related to the behaviour being avoided.

So knowing this, how do we change this? Once you know how, it’s very easy and you will no longer have an excuse to have an excuse.

The simple method is to use the word ‘and’. So you would change the structure of the excuse to:

Not action and excuse

So changing the above examples you would have:

“I can’t go to the gym and I’m tired.”
“I would like to go to the gym and I’m too tired.”
“I’m too tired and [would like] to go to the gym.”

Say these changed excuses to yourself and take notice how you feel about the action. Next time you hear yourself give an excuse, change it and take notice of your feelings. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to find yourself being much more motivated.

And as I hinted at earlier, you can use the same technique on others and here’s how. When someone gives you an excuse reply with the exact words they used for the action and excuse, replacing the linkage words (because, but, or others) with ‘and’. Often they will nod, as if you have agreed with them. Try it, and let me know your results.

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