“If only I had been born rich!”
“If only I were thinner!”
“If only my boss liked me, I would get a promotion!”
Do any of those excuses sound familiar? Perhaps
these and many other excuses have passed your lips.
If this is true , then making excuses needs to become
a thing of the past for you. Why? Brian Tracy,
author, professional speaker and seminar leader,
gives the answer in his excellent audio program
“The Psychology of Achievement.” Mr. Tracy states,
“It is said that the tendency to make excuses for
our mistakes and failures in life is one of the
primary causes for failure as adults.”
Mr. Tracy goes on to explain that when we continuously
make excuses in trying to explain away our faults,
problems and deficiencies, this is one of the
critical factors that holds people back from
developing their full potential as human beings.
Instead, we should be willing to accept full
responsibility for our lives and do something to
change them if we don’t like what we see.
But how do we accomplish that? Let me illustrate
using real people and the three excuses found in
the opening of this article.
“If only I had been born rich!”
Since I’ve been quoting Brian Tracy, I’ll use his
life as an example. But please realize that there
are thousands and thousands of other people out
there who could serve as examples as well.
Brian Tracy was not born rich. In fact, he came
from a poor family. Born in Canada, Mr. Tracy says
that his father did not have steady work and his
family never seemed to have enough money for anything
except the bare essentials. For the first 10 years
of his life most of his clothes were from Goodwill
and St. Vincent de Paul.
Yet today, Brian Tracy is a multimillionaire.
Instead of making excuses for not being born rich,
Mr. Tracy spent years studying why some people were
more successful than others. But he didn’t just
stop there. He took what he learned about how
people became successful and applied the principles
into his own life.
Over the years, he has developed numerous self-
improvement products where he shares his knowledge
with others who want to be more successful.
“If only I were thinner.”
If you think success will only come to those who
are thin, then please think again. In 1986, “The
Oprah Winfrey Show” was launched as a nationally
syndicated program. Oprah’s show grossed $125
million, of which she received $30 million (and
that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what
she makes now!)
It was not until two years later, in 1988, that
Oprah lost 67 pounds after going on a medically
supervised liquid diet.
Of course, success means different things to different
people and making millions like Oprah may not be
what you’re aiming for. The point is that being
fat or thin makes no difference in what you can
accomplish in life.
“If only my boss liked me, I would get a promotion!”
There is an experience I remember hearing (on one
of Brian Tracy’s other audio programs) about a
woman who was passed over for promotion. The
company brought in someone from the outside, so
naturally she was upset and felt a great deal of
resentment. However, a friend asked her if there
could possibly be a legitimate reason that she did
not get the promotion. I’m sure it was hard for
her to face that possibility, but the woman made
some inquiries at the office and found out that
there was only one area in which she was weak.
She decided to work on improving in this area.
Several months later when things didn’t work out
with the person brought in from the outside, the
woman got the promotion.
"Man must cease attributing his problems to his
environment, and learn to exercise his will — his
personal responsibility." — Albert Schweitzer
As you already know, making excuses is easy.
Accepting 100% responsibility for our own lives is
hard. In “The Psychology of Achievement,” Mr.
Tracy states, “The chief hallmark of the fully
mature adult is the acceptance of total
responsibility for our own lives. The great gap
between immaturity and maturity is this acceptance
of total responsibility and the acceptance of total
responsibility means that from then on in life we
have no more excuses.”
I cannot end this article without mentioning one
other person. If anybody had excuses for not doing
something with their life, this woman did. After
all, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear, and she
couldn’t speak. That person was Helen Keller.
Born as a normal, healthy baby, Ms. Keller developed
an illness when she was two years old that made her
burn with fever. The doctor told her parents that
she would not recover, but she did. Unfortunately,
the fever destroyed her sight and hearing. Since
young Helen couldn’t hear, she couldn’t learn to
talk. Imagine how she must have felt, wanting to
communicate with the outside world, but not being
able. Since she couldn’t see, young Helen became
baffled by her surroundings, which caused her to
become bad-tempered, unmanageable, hostile and
contrary. A relative even suggested that the
child be put away. But the girl’s mother
detected that her daughter had intelligence.
Then, on March 3, 1887, a woman named Anne Sullivan
came into young Helen’s life and changed it forever
by becoming her teacher. With Anne Sullivan right
by her side every step of the way Helen Keller
eventually became the first deaf-blind woman to
graduate from Radcliffe College. Later, she
traveled and gave lectures throughout the country
and overseas about the problems that deaf-blind
people face. She also wrote articles and her
efforts were rewarded when legislatures began
establishing schools for the blind and the deaf.
This remarkable woman did not make any excuses!
If you’re ever feeling sorry for yourself (and we
all do from time to time), rent the movie “The
Miracle Worker” starring Anne Bancroft and Patty
Duke or read a biography about Helen Keller.
The next time you are tempted to make excuses for
not having the kind of life you want, please remember
that you will never reach your full potential as a
human being until you accept 100% responsibility
for your own life.
Copyright 2002 Dolores G. Wix
