Grab Hold of Life - Let Go of Excuses

“The person who is good at excuse-making is seldom good at anything else.”

Ben Franklin

I’ve been thinking . . . about making excuses.

Two men were out playing golf on Sunday morning.  At the sound of church bells in the distance, one man said to the other, “Wow!  It’s Sunday morning, and we are out here playing golf instead of going to church.”

“I couldn’t go to church anyway,” his partner replied.  “My wife is sick today.”

The exercise of making excuses is not new to our generation.  We can trace this popular, diversionary technique back to the first story of Adam and Eve.  And close by, in the Book of Leviticus, we find a sacred custom called the “escaped goat.”

When the problems and trials of the people became overwhelming, a healthy male goat was brought to the temple.  In a formal ceremony, the high priest of the tribe placed his hands on the head of the goat and read the list of problems.  This process transferred the agonies and anxieties onto the goat, and the goat was sent away into the pasture, taking the troubles with him.

Things haven’t changed much in 4000 years.  Now people use a less formal process of placing blame for their problems on something or someone else.  Although the term scapegoating is still popular, I prefer a phrase that seems more appropriate:  Excusiology.

We are becoming a society filled with Professional Excusiologists.  The seemingly popular thing to do is to retreat from responsibility and exert incredible energy attempting to explain away our failures, mistakes, inadequacies and general lack of success.

There are essentially two approaches to life.  Doers and excusers.  The quality of your life is determined by which decision you make.  Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover all the excuses made by mediocre performers are non-existent.  “Ninety-nine percent of failures,” said George Washington Carver, “come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”

How is it possible for a major league pitcher to be bounced seven times from baseball because of drug offenses and then be readmitted?  He got his lifetime banishment over-turned when his attorneys submitted evidence that he suffered from a hyperactive condition that contributed to his cocaine addiction.

Then there was a 60-year-old woman who had a fetish for setting forest fires.  After lighting one up in the Shasta Trinity National Forest in California, she simply explained she just wanted to help her son, a seasonal firefighter.  The firefighters, you see, get extra pay when they fight fires.  “She wanted him to be able to fight a lot of fires and make extra money,” said Mark Reina, an investigator for the California Department of Forestry.

An Oregon man attempted to kill his ex-wife.  He was then acquitted on the grounds that he suffered from “depression - suicide syndrome,” whose victims deliberately commit poorly planned crimes with the unconscious goal of being caught or killed.  If I understand correctly, this guy didn’t really want to shoot his wife; he wanted the police to shoot him.  So, he went free.

A fired Northwestern University professor was arrested for collecting his mother’s social security checks for six years after her death.  He blamed “extreme procrastination behavior” caused by depression.

Here is the epitome of excusiology.  Attorneys for Dan White, who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, argued the crime was the result of emotional stress linked to White’s junk food binges.  White was acquitted of murder and convicted on a lesser charge of manslaughter due to his “Twinkie Syndrome.”

The classic has to be the man who sued himself for getting drunk and violating his civil rights.  He was serving twenty-three years at the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake, Virginia for breaking and entering, plus grand larceny. 

According to the Houston Chronicle, he submitted a handwritten suit which said:  “I partook of alcoholic beverages in 1993.  As a result, I caused myself to violate my religious beliefs.  This was done by going out and getting arrested, which caused me to be in prison.  For violating my religious beliefs, I want to pay myself $5 million, but I ask the state to pay it since I can’t work and am a ward of the state.”

Fortunately Judge Rebecca Smith didn’t see things quite the same way and immediately dismissed the suit.  She called the whole situation “ludicrous.”  That’s almost an understatement.

Bern Williams summarized the modern trend of irresponsibility in the Reader’s Digest: “If Adam and Eve were alive today, they would probably sue the snake.”  And why not, it is easier than saying, “It was my fault.  I take full responsibility.”

The simple truth is: people who make excuses a way of life, accomplish little to take credit for, and life will continue to seem unfair.  Excusiology is a dead end way of to live. 

John Wooden was on of the greatest basketball coaches of all time.  Wooden led his UCLA Bruins to a record-breaking number of NCAA basketball championships, and gained the respect of players and spectators alike.  One of his memorable motivating statements admonished players to take responsibility for their actions, “Nobody is a real loser – until they start blaming somebody else.”

Someone once said, “The person who blames himself hasn’t begun their education.  And the person who blames no one has finished their education.”

I walked by the office of an English professor who must have believed that philosophy as well.  An 11 x 14 inch sign read:  “Cut the Crap.  Results - Not Excuses.”  A huge step toward putting life into your living is letting go of excuses.  Consider the following examples of people who accepted responsibility for their situations:

Hector Camacho scored a technical knock-out over Sugar Ray Leonard in his attempted comeback out of retirement.  Though Leonard’s camp seized upon an injury he suffered to his right calf a month before the fight, Sugar Ray down-played the excuses.  “Please, please, I say to all the journalists - do not write this is the reason I lost,” he said.  “I lost to a better man.”

Center-fielder, Duke Snider, and the feared hitter, Willie McCovey, were charged with tax evasion.  Facing a possible prison term and large fine, they had this to say:  “We’re wrong.”

Former Clinton Press Secretary, Dee Dee Myers, was arrested in Washington, D.C. for driving under the influence.  Myers’ response?  “It’s tremendously embarrassing to make a mistake.  I think drinking and driving is a really bad thing . . . I wasn’t thinking and there’s no excuse for that.”

Remember when actor Hugh Grant was arrested with a Hollywood hooker.  Before millions of Tonight Show viewers, Grant silenced the tabloid hounds.  “I know what’s a good thing and what’s a bad thing,” he said.  “It was a bad thing and there you have it.”  No excuses.  No psychological theories.  Just a simple admission that he made a poor decision.

Listen to people and you’ll discover people failing to live life to the fullest by filling their lives with a life-threatening disease.  It’s called excusiology.  They are in dire need of a vaccine inoculation called responsibility to re-energize their lives.

Choosing to take responsibility separates the doers and complainers, achievers and excusers.  The more successful a person, the less inclined they are to make excuses.  People who just exist are quick to explain why they haven’t grown, why they don’t accomplish much, and all the reasons why they can’t improve their position in life.

Brian Tracy makes a great point.  “Continually making excuses and trying to explain away your faults, your problems, and your deficiencies, instead of accepting full responsibility for your life and doing something to change it, are one of the critical factors that can hold you back from achieving your full potential as a human being.”

Recognize any excuses you are using.  Let go of the alibis, rationalizations, and justifications you have endorsed for not getting out of life all the happiness and success you desire.

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,” said Willis R. Whitney, “when all they need is one reason why they can.”

The simple truth is:  You can’t progress beyond where you are until excuses are replaced with action that will make a difference in how your life works out.

We can all start today to develop a winning lifestyle by letting go of excuses and embracing our personal responsibility.

“The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there’s only one other choice.”

Doug Larson