Make a Decision Not an Excuse
Theodore Roosevelt once said “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” In life, we make decisions everyday. Some are so habitual that we don’t really even have to make a conscious decision, we just do it. Others require a little more thought, but we usually follow through based on our better judgment. The most important decisions make us consider all factors involved and then we struggle with our final choice. It’s like mental tug-of-war. As President Roosevelt pointed out, the worst thing that you can do at that point of uncertainty is nothing.
When faced with a tough decision, have you ever said “I’ll have to think about it?” I know I have on several occasions. However for many people, the “thinking about it” process drags out and becomes the “I’m avoiding making a decision” phase. It’s smart to weigh your options, ask the advice of colleagues and consider alternatives; however, simply not making a challenging decision is irresponsible. It’s not just going to go away. It will still be there when you wake up every morning and will hang over you like a dark cloud until you take action.
What’s worse is that the failure to make a decision is progressive or should I say regressive. After the “I’m avoiding making a decision” phase, you start to ease the stress of the decision by making excuses. I‘ve heard every excuse in the book. It’s really amazing what someone will say just to avoid making a decision. The worst is when the excuse is a complete lie. Not only has the action moved from an excuse to lying, but remember the words that we speak often come true so be careful what you say to get out of simply making a decision.
Instead of engaging in all that foolishness and wasting everyone’s time, look at the decision as an opportunity. You have been given the power to make a significant change in the world by the choice that you make. Now, I’m not going tell you that that choice will be right 100% of the time, but how will you ever know if you don’t step out in faith and take that risk. Every hard decision takes courage.
On September 19, 1999, twenty year old Jaqueline Saburido and four friends were on their way home from a birthday party when an SUV driven by a drunk driver slammed into their car. Within minutes, the car caught fire and Jacqui was pinned in the front seat. She suffered burns over 60% of her body and her chances of surviving were slim. Jacqui lived, but her injuries were devastating.
She lost her hair, ears, nose and her hands were so badly burned that all of her fingers had to be amputated. Her left eyelid was removed and most of her vision is gone. Jacqui has had more than fifty operations since the crash and has many more to go. It would have been easy for Jacqui to give up at any point, but she made the courageous decision to keep living her life. Jacqui continues to tell her story worldwide and speaks out against drunk driving in national campaigns.
What if she had made the decision to give up? It would have been so easy for Jacqui to lock herself away from the world forever and use every excuse available not to continue her fight. No one would have blamed her if she did. During an interview, Jacqui said “If you want to do anything, never give up. You need to keep going. Continue to live. Whatever happens in your life, you need to keep going and be happy.” Through her courageous decision to keep going, Jacqui has touched the lives of millions worldwide but more importantly she has saved the lives of hundreds possibly thousands as an advocate against drunk driving.
You have the chance to change lives with your decisions too. At the heart of every dream is the desire to touch the life of another person. I have many students that dream of achieving a certain level of success so that they can help other people. Ultimately, if they fail to make a decision to stay committed to that dream, then those people that they dreamed of helping will remain in the same position. Is that a harsh statement? Yes, but it’s absolutely true.
One of my elite coaching clients dreamed of building one hundred orphanages in India. She had even toured the devastated areas and seen the orphan children eating out of garbage cans. Those images stuck with her as she built her business, but she was still full of excuses as to why her business wasn’t growing more rapidly. It didn’t take long to figure out that she wasn’t implementing all of the strategies that she had learned from our coaching, and the result was a business plateau. Basically, her business wasn’t declining but it wasn’t growing either.
Once she figured out that SHE was actually causing her dream of building one hundred orphanages to slip away, she stopped all the excuses and made the decision to start building her business the right way. Why? Because she realized what was at risk if she didn’t make the right choice. What’s at risk for you? Is your failure to make decisions worth the loss of your dream?
At this moment in your dream building process, your life is in your hands. You have the ability to make a decision versus an excuse. You are either stepping out and standing up in decision land, or you are lazily sitting in excuse land. You’re either achieving your dreams through making decisions, or you’re waving your dreams goodbye as you’re making excuses. You have the God-given ability to make a decision versus making an excuse so use it.
One of my favorite quotes is “Decision plus action equals results.” You first have to make the decision and then take the needed action to create the results that you desire. This works both for us and against us. Let me give you an example. If you make the decision that you want to lose weight and you take the action of exercising for an hour a day, then you will likely achieve the result that you desire. However, if you make the decision to lose weight and your only action is sitting on the couch all day watching television, then you will likely achieve undesirable results. Like I said, “Decision plus action equals results”. It’s inevitable!
Excuses are always followed by reasons of why you can’t do something. “I can’t build my business, because I don’t feel like prospecting. I can’t read this book, because I get a headache reading that much. I can’t attend the seminar because I don’t have time and it costs too much.” When you make an excuse, you instantly plant a seed in your mind that you are incapable of doing something. This is personal self-destruction. Every excuse destroys a little bit of belief in yourself and your ability to achieve your dream.
Without self-belief, there is no motivation to succeed. That’s the main reason that I spend so much time immersing myself in personal self development in the morning before I start my day. Success and motivation is the first thing I hear and see in the morning and the last thing that I allow to go into my spirit as I drift off to sleep. Why am I so disciplined? Because I know that I could never overcome the adversity that I face daily if I didn’t continually reinforce my belief in myself and my dreams. More importantly, I would not be confident in the decisions that I make without that belief.
When you start to question your abilities, you further put off making the decision, which is better known as procrastination. Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Now, I don’t always agree with what the so-called experts say, but this is a point that I agree with 100%. It’s like a breath of fresh air when you push the decision aside and stop letting it worry you for a while. However, procrastination is just a temporary fix. It’s much more stressful to just let the decision hang over your head and possibly get more difficult as time goes by. Like I said before, simply not making a decision is irresponsible. Procrastination will also make you lazy. Do you really want to be known as lazy and irresponsible?
Understand that you have the right to live your dream, but you have to crawl out from under the pile of excuses that have built up and make a decision to change. Inside the word challenge is change. You have to be willing to change the way you handle challenging decisions. You can’t just remain where you are forever. Remember, decision plus action equals results. Take a look at your results. Are you completely satisfied with your success level in every area of your life? Reread that question. I said “completely satisfied”. I did not say comfortable or complacent. To be completely satisfied means that you have achieved every level of success that you can possibly achieve in that area of your life. Personally, I don’t know anyone like that.
I’m not just talking about the amount of money that you have in the bank. I want you to really think about every area of your life – physical, social, mental and financial. If you’re not happy with your results in those areas, then it’s time that you make a decision about where you want to be and what you’re willing to do to get there. You need to make a decision and stick with it.
Your decisions must be based upon your Why, which is your ultimate purpose in life. It is the foundation for every single decision that you make. Without a Why, a focus for your life, your decisions will be aimless and haphazard. Your life will be without direction. When you go on a road trip, you have a plan of action and most importantly directions. You don’t say, “I want to get from Miami to Los Angeles in three days. I’ll just keep going in a northwest direction. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.” You may get there eventually, but you will waste time and resources and likely become frustrated that you simply didn’t grab a map.
Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Without your Why, you are living without a destination. You are without purpose, without aim, without direction. You will be like a piece of paper that’s just blowing along with the wind just going with the flow. That’s fine if you have no goals and want to be a spectator in the game of life. Come on…you and I both know that’s not what you want! You want to be remembered for the life that you led and the lives that you changed.
I challenge you right now to expand your Why. The stronger and bigger your Why, the more decisive you’ll become in your daily actions. If your Why is weak, you will eventually lose all motivation to achieve success. If you’re not emotionally connected to your Why, you will abandon your goals and dreams at the first sign of defeat. Remember, your Why in life is your foundation for every decision that you make. How can you really expect to make wise decisions if your foundation has cracks in it? You can’t! Instead, stand strong on your Why in life and truly believe that the ultimate achievement of your Why is possible.
Make a commitment to get focused on making new and better decisions by believing in your Why, building your self-belief and stopping all of the excuses. Your daily actions will determine your future, and your actions are halted every time you make excuses to stop moving in the direction that leads you to your Why. Just imagine that you get in your car to go to the store. You are traveling at a good rate of speed and then you reach a stop sign. No problem…you stop. As you are about to accelerate, you see another stop sign and then another and then another. It’s not long before you are stopping so much that it seems as if you are never going to reach your destination. You become frustrated and just go home. That’s what happens when you make excuses too! You are no longer progressing in your daily action steps that will assist you in achieving your next level of success. Excuses take over and you take three steps back with every excuse. Before long, you are back where you started and ready to just give up.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, excuses challenge me. Every time that I hear an excuse, I hear fear. Fear is much easier to deal with than an excuse. An excuse can be justified. You can create a whole long list of reasons why your excuse is valid. Let me give you an example. I remember a coaching client that was scheduled to show her business plan to a potential client. We had practiced her plan many times so I knew that she was ready. She had rescheduled the appointment several times and gave me plenty of excuses why – sick child, worked late, no transportation, blah, blah, blah. When she ran out of excuses and reasons to back up those excuses, she was faced with the real reason that she didn’t follow through on her decision…FEAR.
She was so afraid that she would fail that she made up excuse after excuse to try to get out of it. I told her to stop the excuses and take charge of her life! She increased her daily affirmations and the amount of time that she invested in personal development. She rebuilt her belief in herself and faced her fear head on. Within a few weeks, she stopped making excuses, showed the plan and enrolled a new person in her business.
Fear tolerated is faith contaminated. There’s simply no way that you can step out in faith to achieve your dream if you continue to allow fear to steal your belief. That’s right. I said it! YOU are allowing fear to determine your level of success in life. Many people try to play the old blame game, but the only way that you can defeat fear is to stand up to it.
Think about the story of David and Goliath. You have a giant named Goliath that was believed to be over nine feet tall. Then, you have David, who was so small that his body armor kept falling off. David didn’t let the size of Goliath intimidate him. Instead, he walked toward the giant and prepared for battle. Goliath laughed and taunted David. Well, we all know that it didn’t work out so well in the end for Goliath. If fear is your Goliath, then it’s time for you to face it and extinguish it out of your life for good. There’s simply no way that you can achieve the next level of success until you conquer fear.
Fear is also your body’s natural reaction to stress. The body doesn’t like to be stressed. It wants to remain relaxed and doesn’t want to be challenged. That’s why so many people eventually give up on their dream. They’re not willing to challenge their body’s attempt to remain in that comfort zone. As a champion, I know that you’re willing to become uncomfortable and make decisions that will ultimately change your life for the better. As your coach, I’m here to challenge you and to help you make those decisions that will move you forward towards the achievement of your goals and dreams.
Let’s dig a little deeper and see how your decisions are holding you back from living the life that you’ve always dreamed of living. I want you to write down three most challenging areas of your life. It could be finances, relationships, physical health, etc. What areas in your life are you really unhappy with at this time? Don’t go any further in this reading until you’ve made this list.
The one thing that we just have to get out of the way before we proceed is the realization that it’s your fault. That’s right. Your decisions have created problematic situations in these three areas of your life. I want you to take responsibility for your decisions that have produced these poor results. Remember, decision plus action creates results – positive or negative. Yes, it’s hard to admit that you are failing in some way, because of your own decisions or failure to make decisions. Let’s move on to better news.
Remember, I’m here to challenge you, and the following questions won’t be easy to answer. We’re going to focus on how you can move forward and learn from those decisions instead of just settling for your current life results. We will look at your Why and get decisive on building that Why. After all, your Why in life is your foundation for the decisions that you make so let’s make sure that it’s strong enough to withstand hurricane force excuses.
The first question that I’m going to ask you is life-changing. Do your daily actions violate your Why? When I say the word violate, what do I mean? To violate something means to go against something. If you violate a law such as not stealing, you’re going to pay the price. Even if you don’t suffer the consequences right away, sooner or later, you’re going to pay the price for your wrongdoing. A law is put in place to protect you and benefit you. When you go against it, your own protection and benefit is compromised and put at risk.
Are your daily actions violating or empowering your Why? Take a look at what you do everyday and really think about the possibility that those daily action steps are compromising your success. The root of change lies in your daily decisions. I just cannot stress enough the vital role your daily decisions play in shaping your life. I’m not concerned right now with your outward success. Your current level of success is based on all of the decisions that you’ve made up to this point. We’re going to rebuild your future decisions. Your future decisions need not have anything to do with your past decisions. Once you choose to go in a new direction, your decisions will automatically change as a result. Instead of looking backwards at your past, you must look forward towards your future.
Now, take a good look at those three areas of your life that you want to improve. I want you to get committed to examining them and taking responsibility for them. Here’s the harsh reminder again. Where you are in your life is YOUR responsibility, and no one else’s. Your life has been shaped by the decisions that you’ve made. Not your spouse, not your children, not your friends, and not even your enemies are at fault for the decisions that you’ve made throughout your life. If you don’t take responsibility for the current state of these three areas of your life, you’ll never be able to change them.
If you’re going to get committed, it is absolutely crucial that you take responsibility for the current state of these three areas right now! If you’re not willing to take responsibility for your life, then you might as well stop reading this book. Go ahead and put this book down. I say this because until you take full responsibility for your life, you will never move forward and claim the life that you want to live. Have you taken full responsibility for your life? If so, read on.
I want you to examine the three areas of your life that you want to change. Ask yourself right, “What action steps can I take today that will allow me to reshape my future? What can I do today to help move me from where my life is now to where I want my life to be?” Do you want to achieve your Why bad enough to make new decisions? Is your why worth pursuing regardless of the cost? Are you willing to face the criticism that will accompany you in your journey? Remember, when you start to change your life for the better, your enemies pop up. People begin to challenge you. You’ve got to be prepared for those challenges that people will present you with. If you’ve already met those enemies and you’re still moving forward towards your dreams, you’re doing a fantastic job! I am so proud of you for staying committed and for challenging your enemies every step of the way.
When you make a decision to follow your Why and do whatever is necessary to reach it, you must have faith. You must have faith in yourself and in the process. When you plant a seed, you don’t keep digging it up everyday to see if it’s still there. Why not? Because you know that if you continually dig up the seed, then it’s not going to grow. You have to plant the seed, put the soil on it, and allow nature’s seasons to harvest it. Just like nature goes through seasons, your life goes through seasons too.
There’s a reason for every season that you go through in life. It’s not always easy to understand at the time that you are going through it, but is often revealed in the future. One principle that is constant through every season is sowing and reaping. It’s been proven that what ever you sow in life, you will eventually reap. Sowing and reaping will never cease. If you don’t believe it, then just take a look back at the bad decisions that you made. What were the results of those bad decisions? In other words, what did you reap from those bad decisions. Flip that around, what have you reaped from your good decisions? You plant a bad seed; you get a bad harvest. You plant a good seed; you get a good harvest. It’s really just common sense.
I talk a lot about sowing seeds of greatness in the lives of others to reap a bountiful harvest. I’m not talking about just donating money to charity or buying presents for kids at Christmas. Those are great things, but you can also sow seeds with your words and your actions. Speak prosperity into the lives of others. I love to hear parents speaking life into their small children. “You are a champion. You can do all things. I am so proud of you.” Those are seeds of greatness that those parents are planting in the lives of their children. You can also invest your time in a selfless act like volunteering at a local homeless shelter.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that you will reap a great harvest immediately after sowing a seed. It’s possible, but rarely happens that way. Most of the time, you will go through a rainy season first. The rainy season tends to be the tough times when you just don’t know if you can hang on to your dream any longer. It’s also the time that you are faced with the hardest and most crucial decisions. When it rains, it pours! However, the rainy season will make you stronger. Think about it. A seed couldn’t survive or grow without rain. Similarly, you can’t grow without facing those challenges and making those hard decisions.
It’s okay to make mistakes. Mistakes don’t cancel or stop your harvest. You’ve got to realize that in the growth process, you will make plenty of mistakes. They’re essential for the growth. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and don’t keep making the same ones over and over again. One of my favorite quotes by Dennis Waitley is “Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later, a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.” Just consider a mistake a rainy season, but the sun is shining right in the horizon because you learned from it.
After you sow your seeds and experience the rainy season, it’s time to reap your harvest. Just as a farmer is patient during the growth of his crops, you must also be patient while preparing for your harvest. One of my coaching students diligently built his business. He worked long hours and didn’t take any shortcuts. He grew to see just how hard it was to run an ethical business in today’s world. He was also very active in the youth ministry at church. This guy planted seeds of greatness in every area of his life, and he made it through many rainy seasons when his strength was truly tested. Sadly, he grew impatient waiting on his harvest. He just couldn’t understand why his business hadn’t skyrocketed yet. His impatience led to him becoming completely miserable and eventually giving up. Instead of preparing for his harvest, he went back to just living a mediocre existence and not expecting anything great to happen.
While waiting on your harvest, you have to have an expectation that it’s coming. I have this quote taped to my computer keyboard – “I am expecting a supernatural miracle today.” You have to live with a spirit of expectation and constantly prepare for your harvest by speaking daily affirmations.
Here are a few of my own affirmations – “I have planted seeds of greatness and my harvest is coming! I see my harvest! I feel my harvest! I expect to receive my harvest today!” You’ve got to make your affirmations personal to you and what type of harvest that you are expecting. Affirmations are just your faith verbalized. The Bible says “Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” In other words, don’t give up! Your harvest is just around the corner.
Here’s another tough question for you. Are you at a point in your life where you know what you want, but you don’t know how to get it or what your next step is? That’s okay. You don’t have to have the whole process mapped out perfectly before you. The first step is the most important step, and that’s to make new decisions and stop making excuses. You’ve made a decision to move forward and pursue your Why in life. Now, the next step is to figure out how you will achieve your ultimate Why in life. However, you can’t develop that plan of action until you can actually see yourself achieving your goals and dreams.
You must create a dream wall in your construction zone. Your construction zone is where you build your business. If you’re a network marketer, then your construction zone is likely your home office. If you’re a realtor, then your construction zone may be a workspace in someone else’s office building. If you’re a truck driver, then your construction zone is gong to be in your truck. No matter where your construction zone is located, you must have a dream wall. A dream wall is a collection of quotes, pictures, checks, drawings, affirmations or basically anything that motivates you to achieve your Why in life. The walls of my construction zone are filled with reminders of where I’m going in life and the things that I’ve already accomplished.
One of the most important things that I want you to do is add more pictures to your construction zone. Attend more events and take pictures of yourself at those events with fellow champions and your mentors. If your construction zone is your car, just be very careful where you put the pictures. When my wife, Christie, and I started dating, I stuck our photo in my car near the speedometer. Christie got in the car one day and asked what was burning. I didn’t realize that I had placed the photo over the temperature gauge, and I literally blew up my engine. No kidding. I had to trade that car in the next day. So, you see that I am serious about having photos EVERYWHERE!
When you get down and out, just look at your dream board. If you see it, then you can believe it. The world is full of distractions, and it’s really hard to stay focused on your dreams. That’s why it’s so important to plaster reminders all around you. One of my students works in an office setting and is limited on what she can put on her cubicle walls. That didn’t stop her! She typed out affirmations and stuck them to her computer. She made a photo collage of her family, goals and dreams and put it in a little frame on her desk. Whenever she feels challenged by her JOB, she just looks at down at those constant reminders about where she is going in life.
You have the right to achieve your Why and your dream board will keep that in perspective for you, but sometimes those little excuses slip back in the crevices of doubt and fear. The excuses begin to cloud your vision like the fog. Every time you make an excuse, it gets a little thicker. Christie and I often drive up to our cabin in the Smoky Mountains, and there’s a reason for the area being called “Smoky Mountains.” At times, the fog is so thick that you can’t see the taillights of the car in front of you. If you don’t follow the caution signs, you will smash into another vehicle or run off the side of the road.
It’s the same with that cloud of excuses. Your dream vision is blurred and you can barely see your Why in life. At this point, you either take notice of the caution signs and stop the excuses or you will have zero visibility and smash right into adversity. You don’t have to get to this point! If you catch yourself making excuses and avoiding decisions, take a step back and apply what you have learned in this teaching. You now understand excuses are being driven by fear and you have the ability to conquer that fear with your belief.
I don’t want to conclude this teaching before covering this question. Why do obstacles, enemies, and unforeseen circumstances come your way? There are several reasons why these negative things occur. First off, recognize that when you’re pushing yourself towards the next level of success, you will face adversity. One of my great mentors, Dr. Tom Mullins, often says that “If you aren’t currently in a battle, then you’re either coming out of one or preparing for the next one.” Adversity is unavoidable on your success journey. If you didn’t have to face obstacles in life, then how would you build your strength to conquer the next giant that gets in your way? Allow the adversity to drive you and make you stronger!
One major thing that causes adversity is the junk in your life. The junk I am talking about refers to the people or things holding you back. You can’t move to the next level while simultaneously holding onto this junk that’s keeping you in your comfort zone. For example, if you attend personal development events on the weekends, but continue to hang out with the same negative friends that don’t believe in you, then how can you expect to move forward? Here’s another one for you. If your dream is to build a successful business, but the only type of knowledge that enters your eyes and ears is bad television and gossip magazines, how do you expect to promote your belief level so that you can see yourself achieving that dream? It’s really not rocket science. You just need to take action and clean the junk out of your life once and for all.
You must begin living your why NOW. Not tomorrow, not next month, not next year. You must begin living your dream NOW! As long as you continue to see your Why as occurring in the future, that’s where it will always be—in the future. Start living and acting as though your Why is true right now. Who would you associate with? How would you spend your time? In what ways would your life be different? Start today and create an action plan in order to reach your goals and dreams. What sorts of things do you need to do in order to reach those dreams? Write them down and begin to take action on them. Even if you can only think of two things, write those two things down and take action.
More ideas and opportunities will begin to come your way once you make the decision to take action. As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “You don’t always have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” Take that first step TODAY by making a decision to commit to your goals and dreams. Once again…Decision plus action equals results. To achieve the results that you desire, make the decision to get committed and take those action steps toward the achievement of your Why.
Follow the words of the great Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich. He said “If you want to be successful, you must stop making excuses and instead make decisions promptly and definitely. Successful people know what they want and stop at nothing until they get it. They step out in faith and c