Start With A Win - No Excuses - How to stop making excuses and TAKE YOUR LIFE BACK!

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Do you make excuses?  Excuses are what kill dreams!  They prevent us from doing the things we know we need to do but somehow rationalize a way around not doing.  On this episode, Adam discusses the top excuse people use and how to avoid that.  He talks about the emotions behind making excuses as well as about the most common excuses and three things leaders should never say.  Also, how do you know someone is going to make an excuse as well as how to overcome excuses.  Once you eliminate excuses, this is what you gain... Main Topics 01:38 #1 Excuse01:51 People operate off of these two emotions05:20 Most common excuses06:44 Three things leaders should never say09:25 How you know a person is going to make an excuse11:15 Overcome excuses13:54 Can others help you15:25 Eliminate excuses and this is what you gain  No excuses, business coaching, unlock freedom, I don't have time, I didn't know, no one told me, it wasn't my faultHow to grow your business, how to live a productive lifeConnect with Adam http://www.startwithawin.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcontos/ https://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/ https://www.youtube.com/@LeadershipFactoryhttp://twitter.com/AdamContosCEO  Listen, rate, and subscribe! Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

What's the biggest problem that people and businesses have every day? We'll talk about that today in Start With A Win. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters here at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. I got a question for you. When's the last time you

made an excuse? Now, this is an interesting question because this happens to be one of the biggest problems that we have is making excuses for things. Now, in today's podcast, I'm going to talk to you about how to stop making excuses, how to realize when and why you're making an excuse, and what to do to overcome that tendency. Because it becomes a habit. It becomes a really bad habit. So let's take a look at a few statistics here. There are a lot of studies about excuses, believe it or not. It seems to be a relatively well-studied product. And the average American will make almost 2,200

excuses a year. 2,200 excuses a year. It's actually about 2,190 according to recent surveys and studies. But the reason they do this is to validate their decisions. That's really what an excuse is. It's us validating our decision. And generally, it's validating the easy decision that we make. This happens all the time. We blame a manager. We blame a policy. We just say, I'm too tired.

Which, by the way, is the number one excuse out there is, I'm too tired to do that. There are a lot of reasons why we do this, but ultimately it's out of fear. You see, people operate out of two emotions, two emotions here. Now, it was interesting. I was teaching a class the other day and I had a clinical psychologist in there and he's like, yeah, you're right. Generally, people do operate out of two emotions. And I want you to realize this because you go back and forth between these two emotions. And when you're in the other emotion that I'm going to talk about, you start making excuses. What are those two emotions? Those two emotions are love and fear. Love is unconditional giving. It's giving into the situation all the

time. Now, I'm not saying you have to say yes to everything. You can proudly say no to things without making excuses. If the decision to not do things, for instance, if you're in a business and you decide I'm not taking on any more projects, so no thank you, then that's your decision is to say no thank you. So if we decide we're not gonna do something, don't make an excuse for it. Make an answer for it. So love is unconditional giving and you're unconditionally giving into

everything else you have going on if you say no to something. Don't make an excuse around it thinking you're going to make somebody feel bad by saying no. Just say no thank you. I've got other priorities and you're giving into those priorities. That's love. Now, what's the flip side of this? The flip side is fear. So we have love and we have fear. Love is unconditional giving. Fear is actually our default emotion. It's our default mechanism to go to fear. And when we're in fear, we start making excuses. A lot of times those excuses are just rationalizations of our poor decision-making, our laziness. I'm not trying to say that to be mean, but ultimately we are a lazy being. Most beings are. In fact, most beings in nature sleep like, you know, 18 hours a day or something like that. We sleep six to eight hours and we spend the rest of the day

working. Other creatures like dogs, wildlife, things like that, they eat during a certain period of time and then they go lay down the rest of the day. We don't get that luxury as human beings. So ultimately, we use excuses as a way of trying to make time for us and rationalize away things that are either difficult, embarrassing, fearful, change-oriented, costly, exhausting, things of that nature. Why? Why do we do that? And what does that do to us? Well, first of all, it massively limits your potential. It massively limits your potential. In fact, there's a reason why it's said that essentially a third of society is obese, or even upwards of half of society is obese now. And that's because of the excuses that we make.

And a lot of people are like, well, I have a thyroid problem. My wife has a thyroid problem, but she's in the gym every day and she eats very well. A lot of society does. Can't use that as an excuse. I'm sorry. So what we have to do is we have to stop rationalizing away why we're not doing something. Again, you know, a third of society is obese. A third of society says I'm too tired to exercise each day. A third of society also says it's not convenient or it's too expensive or I don't have the time to eat healthy. You know what?

We have time to do what we need to do. Everybody has the same amount of time. Some people make excuses with that time. Other people don't and they put that time to work the very best that they can. So let's take a look at some of the most common excuses. Like I mentioned, I'm too tired. That's the most common excuses. Like I mentioned, I'm too tired. That's the most popular one. That is used essentially 49% of the time. I'm too tired to do that. Or I'm too busy

to do that. Another one that's used quite regularly is I don't have enough money or that costs too much. That's an easy one to throw out there. But I'll tell you where there's a will, there's a way. You go to, let's take for instance, you want to take your family on a vacation. People are taking their family to Disneyland, Disney World, and spending, you know, for a family of three or four, they're spending 20, 25 grand to go spend a week there. And you're looking at it going, wait a sec, that's like a quarter of your income before taxes. How do you do that? Well, they find a way. There's no excuses. Save up, figure it out. Where there's a will, there's a way. There's always a way. In fact, it's interesting. When I was researching this podcast, I even found a Bible quote about excuses.

So Proverbs 22, 12 says, don't excuse yourself by saying, look, we didn't know. Even the Bible addresses excuses. And I talk about leaders and making excuses and the three excuses that leaders are not permitted to make. In fact, leaders are not permitted to make excuses. They're only permitted to look at opportunities and take those situations they didn't know about as challenges to better themselves and their business. So the three things that leaders can't say is, I didn't know, nobody told me, and wasn't my fault. So everything's your fault. You're supposed to know everything or have a resource or just go find out. You don't have to know everything. So don't misinterpret that. But

you're a resource gatherer as a leader. And your job is to help other people have those resources in order to accomplish tasks. So we talked a little bit about the most common excuses. I'm too tired. I didn't have enough. I don't have enough money. How about I don't have enough time? I don't have enough time. Hmm. Let me think about that. We all have the same number of minutes in a day. We all have the same number of days in a week. So how did you not have time to do that, but somebody else did? Is it because you weren't using your time effectively, appropriately, productively? I didn't have enough time. That's an excuse. It's too inconvenient. Is it? It's only inconvenient if you think it is. It's an opportunity

if you think it is. And then here's the fifth one. I'm too forgetful, which this is in the study. I haven't heard that a whole lot, but I forgot is a common one. I've heard that quite a bit. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Or maybe it wasn't, I'm sorry, I forgot. It was, I had something else going on or nobody told me something like that. But ultimately, these are all excuses. Time, money, attention, mindset, things of that nature. We have to overcome our excuses in order to find productivity. If we can't overcome our excuses, we can't find

productivity. Now, here's an interesting thing to think about. Excuses start off with good intentions. They're generally designed to keep you safe or to keep your time appropriately allocated or to keep you, you know, really doing something that is easier than something else. But life isn't about easy. Life is about getting things done in order to get better and help other people get better. That's what life is about. Because if we're not getting better, we're getting worse. If we're not growing, we're dying. You've heard all these cliches about that. But ultimately, those that are growing, those that are getting better are not making excuses.

How do you know somebody is about to make an excuse? First of all, they get uncomfortable. They look around, they'll look down a lot. They will use the words, but, and, or the problem with that is, you know, different things like that. They redirect. There's a lot of redirecting going on that start the excuses. That's the first way you can recognize yourself making excuses and stop yourself from making excuses. What words are you using? Are you beginning to bridge to that excuse with the word but? Consider that. The other thing I want you to think about is excuses are a learned habit and they form habits really bad habits the

more we make excuses the more we make excuses it's like somebody who tells lies or is untruthful in any way. The more they tell lies, the more lies they tell. And it starts to perpetuate itself. It's the same with excuses. Do you know anybody? I'm sure you do. Maybe it's you, if we have to hold up the mirror here. Maybe it's you that makes a lot of excuses. But there are a lot of people that make a lot of excuses. Look for those. Those people never end up being happy or productive. It just doesn't happen. And a lot of times our friend circle makes a lot of excuses as well. The people that they associate with. People who make a lot of excuses hang out with people who make a lot of excuses. People who don't make excuses and don't tolerate excuses don't hang out with people who make excuses.

Think about that. All right. How do you overcome excuses? This is the solution to excuses. So everybody listen up. Pull out that pen and paper. We're going to solve the problem today. How do you overcome excuses? So everybody listen up, pull out that pen and paper. We're going to solve the problem today.

How do you make it or how do you overcome excuses? The answer is another E word. We go from excuses to execution. The only way to overcome excuses is with execution. That is taking action on the thing you're trying to make an excuse about. Because then what happens? It's no longer an excuse. You're actively doing it. And as a result of actively doing it, the excuse doesn't matter. You might have thought about the excuse and paused for a moment and thought, hmm, I'm going to make an excuse about this because I don't feel like doing it right now. I'm going to find something else to do, which a distraction is an excuse, by the way. What are the biggest distractions we deal with? I'll tell you, the first one is social media.

The second one is the TV or Netflix or something else. Generally, a lot of times it goes into the social media where you're scrolling TikTok or Instagram or Reels or whatever else is out there. And don't get me wrong, I'm on social media. This is being posted on social media. But the reality is you have to have that discipline to step away from social media and not make an excuse or not use it as an excuse for not getting something done. So the cure, execution.

What is execution? It's intentional action towards the things that you want to get done. And it's focus. How do we break this circle of execution or break the circle of excuses to get to execution? Write down your goals or write down when you start making excuses and see if this will allow you to recognize that that's an excuse. Why are you not going to do this? I'm not going to do this because X, Y, Z. If it has to do with an excuse, look at it. Is this an excuse? Yes or no. If it's intentional avoidance to go do

something that you need to go do, then fine. That's not an excuse. That's intentional. But an excuse is just an excuse and you're trying to get away with stuff. So you can get good at not making excuses or you can get good at making excuses. You decide. But you can't get good at both. That's the reality. You can be good at excuses or you can be good at execution. Your body and your brain can't function by being so bipolar on both of those that you're sort of getting things done. Not going to work. So ask people to hold you accountable to this. Take a look back at your excuses and learn from those. Because what do excuses create? Excuses are designed to not create regret, but ultimately what they do is they create regret. They create regret. Now, making an intentional decision not to do something should not create regret because you've

made that intentional decision and you're willing to live with the consequences. Making an excuse is not being willing to live with the consequences and it creates regret. Should I have or am I glad I did is the question here. Hmm, that's a good question. Regret is a difficult thing to live through to deal with. So how do we not go too deep in this? Think about what you're doing every day and how you do it. In fact, Aristotle has a great quote that I absolutely love. And that's, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. Are your excuses, your excellence that you're creating? Or are your decisions, the execution that you're creating? Which is it? Excuses or execution? Take and write down in your daily planner, your journal, whatever you do to schedule your day. Maybe it's your outlet calendar. Maybe it's on your phone. What of the decisions that you have

made are excuses? Take some time to reflect. And really what you're going to find is you're going to give yourself more productivity and more time back in your life by eliminating these excuses. That's what I've got for you today on Start With A Win. That is how you can start your day with a win is no excuses. It's Adam Kantos here. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for joining us on Strike With A Win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also, be sure to check out Adam on YouTube and Adam Contos CEO,

as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, Strike With A Win.