Exorcising Your Excuses: Heal Your Mind. Honor Your Body. Manifest Your Dream
258
Exorcising Your Excuses: Heal Your Mind. Honor Your Body. Manifest Your Dream
258eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781524660291 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 258 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Excuses Defined
Are You Living a Lie?
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
— Benjamin Franklin
So here you are, not living the life you want to live. As you walk past the mirror, you notice more of yourself than normal. Slightly embarrassed, you mutter, "How did this happen?" As you wonder why you're looking a little more plump than usual, you hear the chatter of your busy mind explaining, "I'm busy," "I don't have time to exercise right now," "Once I am done with my project at work, I can get serious about fitness again," or "I have to take care of others before myself."
These and countless other excuses parade through your mind in a desperate attempt to lessen your embarrassment. However, even after an honorable attempt to justify your figure, you scratch your head in confusion because your excuses have made you feel worse. Why? They didn't change what's staring back at you in the mirror.
Excuses Defined: Do You Pass the Three-Tier Test?
One of the hardest tasks in becoming excuse-free is identifying what qualifies as an excuse and what doesn't. How do you know when you're making an excuse and when you aren't? After all, you don't have time, and your job is demanding right now, right? To help you with this question, let me suggest two definitions of excuse:
1. Any rational, justifiable, or reasonable explanation as to why you can't accomplish your desires
2. Any time you forget about your ultimate potential
Let's cover the first one. Most excuses hide under the guise of being rational, justifiable, or reasonable. Take, for example, the biggest excuse in America: lack of time. Not having enough time seems to be an accepted reality for all of us. I know that you're busy, and so are your uncle and your uncle's goldfish. Nobody is immune to it. With these facts in mind, we can describe an excuse as rational, justifiable, and reasonable.
Wow! No wonder these little jewels known as excuses make you feel better about yourself. If you can pass the aforementioned three-tier test, you should be out of the woods, right? You aren't really making an excuse if it's reasonable, justifiable, or rational, right?
Wrong!
The reality is that you still have that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you need to change. How irritating! The proverbial mirror never lies. You may ask yourself, "How can this be?" After all, you have a rational, justifiable, or reasonable explanation for not accomplishing your goal, right? So why do you still feel like something is not right within you?
The Test
Here's a simple test you can use to find out if you're indeed making an excuse: if your logical, reasonable, or justifiable reason for not taking action puts a barrier between you and your goal, you know without a doubt that you are making an excuse. (Keep in mind that this test is valid even after you go through the aforementioned three-tier test.)
Say, for example, you want to get in better shape, but you find yourself continually saying that you're too busy and don't have enough time to get to the gym. You back up your statements with your schedule, proving that you really don't have time to exercise. Although your reason is rational, justifiable, or reasonable, it still limits you from reaching your goal. No matter how you try to spin it, this is an excuse because it limits your personal development and divides you from your goal.
Your Nature
The struggle here is that you are a human being. As a human being, you were designed and created to better yourself on a continual basis. This is literally hardwired within your DNA for your survival. Think of a time when you wanted to accomplish something, but you ended up making an excuse instead. When this happened, you placed your very essence into a state of developmental decline. In other words, any time you make an excuse instead of reaching for your goal, you negate your God-given ability to create victories in your life. In essence, you forfeit your ability to develop as a human being and thereby don't meet your potential.
This leads us to the second definition of excuse making. Before I discuss this definition, let me be very clear about my personal beliefs and experience with excuse making. I believe that we are all creations and expressions of God, and as such, we have limitless potential to achieve anything that inspires us. If you have the inkling, hunch, or desire to better yourself in any way, those desires should be respected and viewed as inspiration from the Higher Source.
If your logical, reasonable, or justifiable reason for not taking action puts a barrier between you and your goal, you know without a doubt that you're making an excuse.
When we forget that we have such divine potential, we default to excuse making. In his book Excuses Begone, Wayne W. Dyer defines an excuse as a "misalignment." When you make excuses, you forget about your limitless potential, which prevents you from reaching your ultimate potential.
When you make an excuse, you falsely believe that external circumstances are limiting you. Furthermore, you falsely believe that you're a victim of those external circumstances. In his book Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill coined a term that he referred to as "the other self." The other self is the side of you that doesn't make excuses and walks in faith toward any goal that you've been inspired to make. When you experience your other self, you don't think of all the reasons you can't accomplish something; rather, you focus on all the reasons you can and will.
We are all creations and expressions of God, and as such, we have limitless potential to achieve anything that inspires us.
When you operate from this other self, you don't think in terms of limitations, difficulties, or impossibilities, which are all forms of fear. In this mind-set, you feel energized, inspired, and unstoppable. I trust that you've had these moments in your life. Recall a time when you felt inspired. You probably felt that you could not and would not be stopped, despite obstacles in your path. In this state, you weren't capable of making excuses. You chose to view all obstacles as blessings in disguise that were designed to teach you and make you stronger.
At this point, if you find your mind coming up with excuses, such as, "Yeah, well, that's nice, and it sounds good, but I live in the real world with real challenges and problems," I respectfully invite you to consider three things:
1. Life will not slow down for you in the near or distant future.
2. It is your responsibility to live excuse-free despite your circumstances.
3. It is your birthright to live in an excuse-free inner world.
Let's discuss these three important truths in turn, starting with the first one. For most people, lack of time is the number-one excuse. However, I think it's appropriate to realize that life is never going to slow down for you.
Procrastination is one of the most damaging effects of making excuses. If we are indeed too busy, we have no choice but to put our goals on the back burner for a future date. This in and of itself keeps us trapped in a vicious cycle of expecting life to slow down so we can accomplish our goals. In this state of mind, we fail to recognize that our goals and ambitions are slipping further and further away.
If you have and inkling, hunch, or desire to better yourself in any way, that desire should be respected and viewed as inspiration from the Higher Source.
Remember — it's merely an illusion that life will slow down. The only way we can make time for exercise and healthy eating habits is to make them priorities. To start your journey of exorcising your excuses, look at your daily schedule and activities and do the following: look for time wasters that you can discard, such as TV watching, Internet surfing, phone calling, excessive texting, and any other activity that can be minimized to an appropriate time frame. Don't fool yourself on this. Most people can delete some useless activities. When you eliminate time wasters, you can fill your time with exercising and preparing healthy food.
Let's look at the second reason you aren't the exception to the rule: it is your responsibility to live excuse-free despite your circumstances. If you truly desire to live excuse-free, you must take this literally. You are not the exception. However large my trials and travails are, they are equaled or trumped by what other people are going through.
Let's be very clear here. Life will get hectic, and it will throw curve balls at you. You will have times of depression, anxiety, and fatigue. You will have times when you feel mentally sluggish and unmotivated. As hard as this seems, it doesn't excuse you from staying true to your desire. The reason for this is simple: life will always happen.
If you aren't overly busy at this time, you might be a little down about a relationship. If you aren't experiencing a bout of depression, you might have anxiety about a new job responsibility and that jerk of a boss that never gives you a break. If you have the best boss in the world and your work is fine, you might be consumed with a volunteer project that takes many hours of your day and adds significant stress to your life.
When you resort to excuse making, you forget about your limitless potential, and thus your false beliefs lead to actions that are not conducive to your ultimate potential.
Your goal is to not allow yourself to make an excuse. Here is a promise that will inspire you to action: your life will get easier when you clear out the excuses and make time for your priorities.
Take exercise as an example. Numerous studies indicate that aerobic exercise reduces anxiety, stress, depression, ADHD, and addictions. Wow! When we choose to prioritize things that are good for us, our lives magically become a little bit easier. Human beings have a perpetual problem: we tend to focus on how hard change will be. We rarely focus on the benefits of change. We rarely understand how change can bring pleasure into our lives.
Finally, it is your birthright to live excuse-free. Making excuses chips away at your consciousness and at your character. If you excuse away inaction, you incur a guilt that won't leave until you face and correct your excuses.
Excuse making is analogous to loading a pickup truck with bricks. Each excuse you make is a brick loaded into your mind. With each succeeding brick, you add more mental weight. When you load too many bricks, you lose horsepower and become bogged down. This becomes an extremely discouraging and cumbersome mental activity that both limits your divine potential and keeps you stuck in your excuses.
When you live in your excuses, you may be tempted to believe that this state of being is normal. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your natural state of being is excuse-free. When you were a child and wanted something, you didn't let anything stand in your way. If you wanted cookies, you set out to get them peacefully or by force. If you wanted to raise money, you put up a lemonade stand and got it done.
So why did this change? Why do you set a goal and then question yourself and talk yourself out of it? Why do you have to set the same goal one hundred times with an inner knowing that you'll ultimately fail at it? Is this your fate? In the next chapter, I'll delve into why this happens and give you clear instructions on how to change it. I'm excited to help you scrub the excuses out of your brilliant and limitless brain.
CHAPTER 2
Habitology
Discovering Why You Do the Things You Do There are certain things that, for want of ability to change, one must embrace. Because if the same ingrained habits constantly worsen your life, at least you aren't just repeating yourself.
— Benson Bruno
Humans are creatures of habit. We're on autopilot much of the time as we work, eat, and interact with others. Unfortunately, some of our habits are not so healthy, such as overeating, smoking, overspending, being negative, and so on. While all of us have shadow traits that we would prefer remain private, you can take heart. You are now going to become aware of what's driving your habitual actions and to learn the necessary steps to correct them.
It's time for a confession. In the not-so-distant past, I believed that I was a victim of my external circumstances. I believed that many of my misfortunes were a direct consequence of the actions of others or the result of serendipitous events. In other words, I wasn't willing to take responsibility for how my life was taking shape.
But because life is the ultimate teacher, I've learned that I can't blame other people or external situations for my flaws. Initially this was hard for me to accept. Yes, some external circumstances are uncontrollable, and I don't deny that they can profoundly influence us. However, I'm convinced that we can — and must — control how we react to external circumstance because they have the ability to teach us or to destroy us.
Take, for example, one of my past clients, whom I'll call Linda. One of my most successful clients referred Linda to me. Linda had been told that I could help with any problem she had, so she was expecting the world. Little did I know that I was in for another life-changing experience.
When I met with Linda, I felt energy being sucked out of me. It was as though somebody was siphoning the energy from my soul. After I asked about her goals, she revealed her true colors by stating, "I just have had the worst luck over the years, and I can't seem to get any sustainable momentum." Little did I know that she would utter countless similar statements, such as, "I am so old," "I'm a loser," "I just can't get it together," "people are judging me," "I'm not losing weight fast enough," "I am sick of healthy food," and so on and so on.
Without yet knowing the cause of her continued failures, I opted to bury my head in the sand and disregard all her reasons for not succeeding. Instead of getting to the root of her problem and doing some life coaching, I opted to jump right into the personal training portion of her program.
What followed was predictable. I designed an exercise and nutrition program for her and tried to get her "pumped" to follow it. I felt a false sense of accomplishment as she nodded in agreement. I told myself, If I can just get her exercising, it should take care of the rest. How terribly wrong I was!
Linda exercised, but only when she was with me. She never exercised by herself or followed the program as outlined. Initially she began to eat better, but only for two to three days at a time. I began to pull my hair out as I realized that nothing seemed to last with her.
At the beginning of her next session, I pulled her into my office and canceled our workout because I'd had what was akin to a revelation, a proverbial smack in the face by life (that loving and caring teacher I mentioned earlier). During a moment of insight, I realized why Linda kept reverting back to her old ways: she was the victim of her subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is analogous to a computer that stores and runs programs. A computer will run a program only if it has been downloaded by a living, breathing, conscious human being. A computer can't and will not run a program that has not been downloaded. In like manner, our subconscious mind gets loaded up and programmed by all sorts of stimuli in our environment. What may seem spooky to some is that our subconscious mind can be programmed even without the participation of our conscious mind.
In other words, you download the programs in your subconscious mind, and your conscious brain opens up the program and runs it. If, for example, your parents promoted a poverty mind-set, you will be programmed with that mentality.
Linda was nothing more than a victim of her subconscious mind, which hosted hundreds of negative programs. So her conscious mind was busy running those very programs. This was evidenced by all the negativity that flowed from her lips. In a very real sense, she wasn't even aware of that negativity.
If we were to pry Linda's brain open and look at the programs that her subconscious mind was storing, we would see something similar to the following list. Keep in mind that I didn't just randomly write down these responses; they are from the conversations I had with her. I have phrased them differently so you can visualize her subconscious programming, but the original ideas behind her statements remain intact.
- "I am so busy, I don't have time to exercise."
- "I am so busy, I don't have time to prepare healthy food day in and day out. Heck, who does?"
- "I deserve to have sweet treats, given the stress I'm under."
- "I exercise so that I can eat what I want to."
- "I'm a foodie."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Exorcising Your Excuses"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Griff Neilson.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
About the Book, vii,
Orientation, ix,
Introduction, xxxi,
Chapter 1: Excuses Defined, 1,
Chapter 2: Habitology, 8,
Chapter 3: Become Aware of Your Conditioned Inner Worldview, 20,
Chapter 4: Creating a New and Exciting Worldview, 34,
Chapter 5: Excused from Health and Fitness, 46,
Chapter 6: Themes and Memes, 58,
Chapter 7: Genes and Memes, 68,
Chapter 8: Putting Your Excuses on the Bull's-Eye, 82,
Chapter 9: From Crystal-Clear Vision to Crystal-Clear Reality, 96,
Chapter 10: Excuse Exorcism 1, 115,
Chapter 11: Excuse Exorcism 2, 130,
Chapter 12: Excuse Exorcism 3, 144,
Chapter 13: Excuse Exorcism 4, 166,
Chapter 14: Excuse Exorcism 5, 187,
Chapter 15: Excuse Exorcism 6, 206,
Conclusion: Exercising and Your Excuse Exorcisms, 219,