How You Know Your Excuses Aren’t True

If you believe there is some external reason you can’t produce the results you want, you must be willing to look at the evidence stacked up against you. The evidence strongly suggests that there are people who are producing that same result under the same circumstances.

Here is how I know this is true:

One person believes their company is too expensive, that they can’t beat their irrational competitor, and that there is no way to command the price they need. Other salespeople in the sales company with the same pricing model and the same irrational competitor are going to President’s club. If it is possible for the people who are succeeding to sell and win, it is possible for you.

You might use the excuse that you don’t have time to do whatever it is that you should be doing, like exercising, reading, meditating, working more or some other activity that would improve your life. There are other people—some of them busier than you—who use the same 24 hours that you have to do some or all of these things. Of course, these people are armed with the superpowers of self-discipline, focus, and priorities, superpowers that are available to you whenever you want them.

Excuses absolve you of the responsibility to change, to do something different. When you choose to use something external as an excuse, you do so because there is nothing you can do about something outside of your control. If there is nothing you can do about whatever you are using as an excuse, you are free from the responsibility to do something different—even if you are not free of the consequences.

Your government, your manager, your territory, your pricing model, and your irrational competitor are not valid excuses. You share all these things with other people who are succeeding. Neither is being constrained by the same 24 hours that you share with all the other inhabitants of planet Earth.

Your excuses aren’t true. They’re just a way to absolve yourself of the responsibility to change.