4 Excuses Achievers Never Subscribe To

Who is an achiever? A person that gets things done. That’s it. Achievers live in only two very clear-to-understand states. The first is “before the task started”. The second is “after task completed”. Those who are not achievers dwell in an intermediate state between the two. That state is called “excuses”.

If you desire to win in life. If you desire to live a life a lot better because you know it can get better… then don’t go easy on yourself. We demand so much from life, yet in return, we only want to offer less. The proof is that people live life hoping to get lucky. Hoping to win the lottery. Hoping to get connected to the right people. Hoping to be given a break. Hoping for someone or something to work in their favor so that they can live the life of royalty.

There are 7 billion of us here. Imagine if 6.95 billion were all hoping the same thing…

If you understand what all this means and are prepared to actually be your OWN savior of your OWN life, then here are 4 excuses you have got to unsubscribe from immediately.

I don’t have the money to invest right now

Common to most who desire to start businesses. Lack of capital and financial backing seems to be the greatest excuses most people have that want to begin a small venture. For those that believe so… they are right. But for the real entrepreneur, there is always a way to achieve your goals without initially depending on external factors like money.

When you give up here, it is simply because you lack IMAGINATION. Plus, it is evident that you may have not read about the thousands of people who were able to figure out how to get the money they needed to start their ventures. People who came from situations such as real poverty. Who were probably used to half of the full-course meal every day.

How do you unsubscribe from this excuse? Create a plan. One which not only makes operational sense but also financial sense. Any plan that can guarantee financial stability in the near or distant future will interest a great number of investors. Or, you could try to look at the “next best alternative” commonly known as “Plan B”. Maybe you don’t have money to open a store, but you could do door-to-door sales until you rack up enough cash. Read online, the solution to whatever problem you face is a google search away.

I don’t have the skill required

No one is born with the knowledge to manufacture cars. No one leaves primary school with the knowledge to run a taxi business. Not everyone leaves college with the knowledge to run a 7-star hotel.

Those that end up running large software companies and 7-star hotels didn’t let their skill-sets (or lack-of) at the time define them. Shame on people for trying to figure out their dream based on the skills they have. Why not figure the skills you need for the dream you want?

When you give up here, it is simply because you lack RESOLVE. It may not seem so initially, but I truly believe lack of resolve is the issue. Do you really know what you want? Are you really prepared to do whatever it will take to achieve your goals? Are you sure about yourself?

Before you label yourself a computer person, accounting person, a strictly mechanical person, or finance person… ask yourself if you were born with any certification in hand that indicated you would grow up to be a THIS guy or THAT girl 20 years from then?

You are an adult. Capable of making your own decisions. Forging your own path. Deciding what you will wear today. What you will eat tomorrow and what you will want to teach yourself tonight.

How do you unsubscribe from this excuse? Find your resolve. You must be very very clear about what it is you want to do and you must be prepared to begin it. Spend time asking yourself whether this is what you want to do. Because if it is, the next step is to get into action.

We often think we are ready than we really are. When an opportunity we wanted doesn’t come our way, we seem to blame every other thing around us… never questioning whether we were really ready to embrace that opportunity in the first place. Are you really ready to own a supermarket right now? Are you really ready to get promoted to Assistant Manager of another company? Are we really ready to get a loan from the bank to start that venture right now?

The answer we like to tell ourselves is yes. But there is a reason why the world still says no. What if we aren’t yet in the right mindset or have the right skill-set to be that billionaire that owns 7 hotels?

With resolve and determination, you will get past a lot of these obstacles because you will not only be focused on applying effort. But you will be humbled by the fact that until you are ready, you will keep getting better. You will keep seeking truth and knowledge. You will master any and all the skills you will need to make progress towards the life you desire.

I will start tomorrow

What risk exists if a patient in need of immediate medical attention is told by the doctor that should diagnose him/her, “come back tomorrow”.

It should come as no surprise to you that so many of us desire a really spectacular life. It should also not shock you that if given the opportunity to make progress in realizing that spectacular life, most would opt to not start immediately. No urgency.

Imagine yourself at a friend’s house. You suddenly feel you need to be back home as soon as possible. Your next step is to get up and leave, but you do absolutely nothing for whatever reason. You end up staying there for hours… but you are still in a hurry to get back home.

Crazy right?

Is it a surprise that in 7 billion people… a really small percentage of those people are the ones that end up being the world’s most admired success stories? Why?

When you give up on pursuing your dream here, it is because of LAZINESS. You know what you are supposed to do. You know when you are supposed to do it… but you just decide to not start.

Keep in mind, I have said DECIDE to not start.

How do you unsubscribe to this excuse? Well, to be a great footballer, you need to be great at football. To be a great business person you need to be great at running a business. To be great at anything, you have to back it up by having a great work ethic. Make working on your dream-related activities a habit.

Many of us already give 8 or more hours to accomplishing the dreams of others and spend less to 0 minutes a day working on our own. Whatever discipline and motivations that have you giving someone else your mind, energy, and time… figure it out for your own self. How much dedication is your own dream worth versus someone else’s?

Never forget this truth – excuses are the most effective means to bury your goals and dreams.

I don’t have time

I die a little inside every time I hear this one.

24 hours is all that we get before a day is consumed. And once a day is gone, it can never come back. If asked what you did yesterday that contributed to your goal… what would you say? If asked what you did yesterday that DID NOT contribute to your goal… what would you say? Which answer would make you smile? What has the story of your life been as a result of your actions this past week?

If you give up on a dream here, it’s because you do not make achieving your goal a PRIORITY. Anything you do, say, or think… Any choice you make, try to think of all of these as indicators of whether or not you are moving towards your goals.

Break down your life into what helps achieve your goals and what doesn’t. Just try it. Have two columns. One lists down the activities contributing to your goals (excluding eating and sleeping), while the other should list activities NOT contributing to your goals.

You will be surprised how a single day goes by and how you have accepted your day to end based on that list. Try to analyze 3 or more days. Are the days' activities similar to each other? If yes, do you know what that means? It means that chances that you will let tomorrow end like today are significantly high. Do you know what that also means? That you might end up being the same person, doing the same thing 1 week from now. Or even 1 year from now. I kid you not.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the past three days of a normal weekday have been the same, what are the chances that the fourth day will be different? Instead of days, use weeks. Instead of weeks, use months. Instead of months, use years. Instead of years, use decades.

Exaggerating? Talk to old people. People in their senior years. Randomly. Rich, poor, modest, etc. Find out how their lives were lived. Try to pick out from them their proudest moments. Try to pick out moments they regret.

Let me ask – Why do unimportant thoughts, tasks, and conversations dominate more than 90% of most of our daily attention and focus?

What is worse: Why do we then expect that we can build the life we want with 0 to 10% of the remaining attention?

Yes. 0%. Like a great article can be written by simply staring at a screen. Like a car can be assembled by an engineer by simply staring into the atmosphere.

Or. 10%. Like we can only write the title of the best blog post without the body and we are done. On to the next article. Like we can only create the roof of the house we want to build and we are done. On to the next roof.

To win, you must play all in. You must do what you can do and learn what you cannot do… so that you eventually do that as well. You must invest time, energy, and resources in your most important activities. MOST important.

How do you unsubscribe to this excuse? In all honesty, there is no complication to this. You are either in or your out. Period. There is absolutely no hope for the man or woman who cannot decide whether or not to prioritize his or her dream. Any book you read any seminar you attend or any tactic you employ will never work if you do not decide internally to prioritize implementing them.

Priorities are truly the defining factors of how successful lives are built. If you prioritize watching movies to working on your business idea, you may never realize that successful business.

Does that sound unrealistic? It’s not. Trust me, you can’t be 50% in. 50% dedication does not win NBA championships. Nor does it create the best property development companies. Nor will it create the perfect life you envision in your mind.

If you want to settle for less, trust me, you will get exactly that or even less. But never more.

I may really sound like I’m telling you to go all soldier-like even though all you want is a pretty modest upgrade to your life but you must trust me on this… Think about how early you already are waking up just to maintain the life you live right now. Think about just how much work and stress you have to endure just to keep up.

What if that effort and dealing with stress were dedicated to the life you want? Wouldn’t that be worth it?

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” ~ Bruce Lee.

Research if you have to, but the men and women we admire and respect as successful plan their days around their dreams. Even if watching movies is in their program, it is surely not number 1, 2, or even 5 on the list of priorities for the day, week, or month.

Watching movies, going out on weekends, eating fast food, playing video games is often top of mind for many of us. Ever had a craving for something fried or sweet that consumed your whole day? Ever hoped the day would end quickly so that you could make it home to watch the latest episode of [insert name of TV Show here]. Ever felt anxious about a trip you have been planning for weeks in advance and couldn’t think of anything else?

Now, if you were to guess, do the founders of some of the largest most admired companies think the same way? You don’t know? Well, look at their actions. What do their actions say? By what they do… can we figure out what they decided or what choices they made? By their choices can we figure out what thoughts they had that led them to those choices? From those thoughts, can we figure out what their priorities were?

To conclude

Let’s face it, we do less than we are really supposed to do, and yet often expect 10 times more in return. It doesn’t matter whether you have grandiose goals or just simple modest dreams. The formula remains exactly the same. Surprisingly enough, the discipline is the same as well. The type of effort may vary but the quality of effort doesn’t. Unless you’re giving 100% of your personal time, energy and effort, you may never arrive at the life you really want.

I believe we are after the same thing for our lives and futures. So I’m pretty certain we seek many of the same answers. Investigating what doesn’t work is just as important as seeking what does. And unless this very moment you are realizing your dream of owning a 7-star hotel, or running the largest chain of supermarkets, or owning a pretty successful small start-up venture… what you are doing now may not be working. That means something must change or everything will remain the same.

The man or woman with a strong RESOLVE can use his or her IMAGINATION to figure out how to accomplish the most important PRIORITY in his or her life. Why? Because he or she will never let LAZINESS stand in the way of the life he or she desires.

#makeProgressNotExcuses