Excuses will ultimately keep you from achieving your goals in life. If you want to improve your life in any way, it is necessary to stop making excuses and start taking responsibility for what you need to do in order to achieve your dreams. Excuses are a crutch for avoiding failure or negative outcomes, but they also keep you from learning from your mistakes or achieving big dreams. Here are some of the many harmful effects that making excuses can have on your life.
Excuses Are A Form Of Self-Sabotage
Also known as self-handicapping, self-sabotage is when your behaviors actually thwart your own chances of success by limiting your performance. It is the ultimate excuse you can tell yourself. “If I do not try very hard and I fail, it will be because of my effort, but because of my ability.” In other words, it is not really your fault if things do not work out, because you were not giving your best effort anyway. Sound familiar?
Self-sabotaging behaviors including making excuses but also can include things like abusing drugs and alcohol, distracting yourself with other pastimes (like video games), or procrastinating. These are all coping mechanisms designed to force your own underachievement, but they are things on which you can blame your future failure.