7 great excuses to avoid doing something meaningful with your life!

7 excuses for doing something meaningful with your life

It is common for a business owner to be in a constant state of anxiety. Do you feel like you are not getting enough done? That you are not doing enough to live a meaningful life? If you let your business just happen around you, rather than make goals and acting towards them, you are going to need some excuses so you do not feel to bad about it!

When we are procrastinating, we are actively delaying decisions or actions unnecessarily. The best way to do this is by justifying to ourselves the reasons why we should not ACT right now!

Making good excuses is a talent, without them, you might have to dig deep and start to make important and meaningful with your life, rather than looking for the reasons why you cannot.

Here are some of my favourite excuses I hear as a coach.  If you would like to add some more to the list, feel free to put them in the comments below –

  1. It is Christmas time.

Many of us hide behind ‘Christmas time’ as a great way to procrastinate. Do you catch yourself saying the following?

“It is a busy time of year”, “I have too much shopping to do, I cannot put any energy into anything else at the moment”, “I am just stressed, it is Christmas”. “I don’t have enough time”. “I will start in the New Year”. “let me just get passed Christmas before I take on any new projects”.

Why are we stressed at Christmas? Most likely because we have procrastinated all year and now, we need to do something about it. If you are procrastinating at Christmas time, then you are probably procrastinating in all areas of your life. Am I right? Stop using Christmas as an excuse to not ACT towards your goals. We have known all year that Christmas is coming, take small steps often towards the year to take the stress out of the day. Think back to the past 3 Christmas’ you have had – did everything you are worried about now, matter back then? Did anyone care that something did not go as planned? The answer here is most likely NO!

If you want your business to stay where it is, if you do not want to achieve your goals and dreams and start living life to your fullest potential, then by all means, keep using Christmas as an excuse for not taking action.

  1. I don’t know how.

Were you born knowing how to write? Read? Podcast? I certainly wasn’t!

None of us start of knowing how to do something. Everything is learnable with the right mindset. The only thing that you are saying when you use this is excuse is that you either have a lack of will or desire to learn how.

Learning new things can be a challenge, you can choose to rise to this challenge, or you can choose to keep saying you “don’t know how”.

  1. I haven’t got time.

We all have the same amount of time in a day, the difference between successful people and people who are not is how they use that time. If you sat down and looked at how much time you waste in a day that could be used on something productive, you will be surprised.

Using our time well and prioritising what is important is how we can combat this excuse. There is always enough time to work on something – that is if you ditch the excuse and make room for it!

Success does not happen overnight, it takes time. Business is like a tree, you water it daily and over time it grows and blossoms, you only need to allocate a small amount of time each day to growth, but with consistency and persistence comes the rewards. The question is, will you allocate the time or not?

  1. It is too risky

When we take a risk in life, we a facing the fear of uncertainty! This can be a hard thing to face for many people and why this excuse is a common one for not acting towards a dream.

Think back to risks you have taken in life – what happened when you did take one? My experience with risks, is the rewards. There are two ways it can go when taking a risk, the first is it doesn’t go as plan or two it works out and you achieve what you set out to achieve. Either way you learn and adapt, you come out of the process more resilient and confident than you were when you went into it.

Isn’t a risk worth taking if the result is resilience and confidence despite the outcome?

The only risk you don’t want to take is regretting to not have tried in the first place.

  1. It is not perfect yet

If you are waiting for perfection you are never going to get there! There is no such thing as “perfect”. Done is always better than perfect.

Perfectionism and taking action do not work well together, the fear of failure and insecurities are usually the reason why perfectionism shows up in business and why we use this excuse to avoid acting.

Do you want to continue not trying at the risk of imperfection? The only way to improve on something is to make sure it exists in the first place! Your first ever blog, or podcast is not going to be great, neither will your second, but by the third you will find they get better and better! If you don’t start there is no other way to get better.

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin. ”
– Ivan Turgenev

  1. My idea isn’t original enough

Does anyone have original ideas these days? Surely the goal of marketing is not taking an idea and finding an angle or audience to make it work for you? Finding a point of difference would not be a thing if every idea were original.

How would life look if there was only one coffee shop? Only one clothes store?

If you are waiting for that original idea to act, it is never going to happen. Have you ever considered that by acting and by starting you may uncover an idea in the process? There is no better way to find out what is missing than by starting and failing and starting again!

  1. I am worried about what others will say about it

Are you worried what others might think of you?

Do you try to please everyone?

If you are worrying about what others think about you it usually comes from an inner insecurity or low self-esteem. If you want to create a meaningful life for you, you need to follow your dreams without letting the expectations of others stop you. Start looking after yourself through self-care and meditation to let go of this excuse.

With success, comes critics. So, if you do not want others to be jealous or envious of your success then definitely do not take action towards your goals!

Tired of excuses?

You do not have to battle procrastination alone! If you struggle with procrastination, making excuses, going back to the same negative habits and routines keeping you stuck in a cycle of inaction, and you finally want to start doing something meaningful with your life. Then let me help you like I have helped many business owners successfully tackle these problems. I invite you to take the next step with me and start to change by stopping excuses dead in their tracks and instead taking the necessary action to become the successful person others look up to.

Contact me today to join my community of action takers!