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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Do any of these sound familiar?

  • I can’t do it
  • It’s too hard
  • That’s not realistic

Maybe you know these people; could you be one of them? Far too often, most people wave the white flag before they step foot on the field. They admit defeat before they even understand the strength of their opponent. This type of thinking is precisely what most people use to sell themselves short. Anyone can make some poor excuse to not do something, especially if they don’t want to do it. The harder task would be demonstrating that the excuses we so commonly use are valid. Let’s be honest, of all the reasons we can come up with, how many of them hold any weight? How many barriers do we genuinely have preventing us from doing what we want? I’m talking about hand-in-your-face forcing you to stop, you can’t break the laws of physics type barriers. Even someone with significant physical challenges could still learn to play basketball.

There’s a saying that no idea is original, anything you could possibly want to do has likely been done by another person. That means that there’s a blueprint for you to follow to accomplish any goal. You don’t have to start from scratch, you can learn from the experiences of the hundreds or thousands that have come before you. If I ask you to build a car engine and you have never done it before, that would be a pretty difficult task to accomplish. However, if I gave you a single blueprint and maybe some directions, then it would become much more manageable. Now If I gave you hundreds of example blueprints and instructions you could follow, then building a car engine becomes trivial.

I propose a challenge to each of you reading this next time when there’s something you want to do. Instead of telling yourself why you can’t do something, change gears and examine why you can. Grab a pen and paper and make a list of 5 reasons why you CAN accomplish your goal. To help you get started I’ve listed a couple of my own, feel free to use them.

I can do this because

  • I can learn from others who have done this before
  • there is no one physically preventing you from doing it
  • I can watch YouTube videos showing me how to do it
  • it’s been done before, I know it’s possible
  • I can borrow books from the library to learn how to do it

What if you still can’t find a reason to do something and again you’re coming up with excuses for why it won’t really work? Then you’ve likely set the wrong goals, ones that are not fully aligned with your personal values. That’s ok, there’s nothing to be discouraged about. Get back to the basics, reassess what you’re really trying to accomplish and find the goals with the most meaning to yourself. Because I guarantee once you’ve found the right goals, the reasons why you can, will overcome the reasons why you can’t.