My son Jake was in fourth grade and his youth football team were defending the previous year’s Super Bowl Championship. Behind with little time left, the offense was on the opponent’s 10-yard line. With time for one last play, Jake dropped back, the blitz came and he was sacked. Game over! Then, the lessons began.
Afterwards, with his teammates already moving past the game to enjoy the cookout party, Jake got in the car feeling devastated, with tears in his eyes. Here came the first lesson.
“Dad, those referees were horrible! If they had not made so many bad calls, we would have won that game!” I turned towards him and sternly replied, “Stop it! Stop making excuses. If you will let allow yourself one excuse, you will allow a million. You are not a victim. Stop it.”
Sound familiar? Every single person has used excuses as a crutch at one time or another. Being a victim is convenient. Being a victim is soothing, like a warm blanket on a cold day. There is comfort in the blame game. Certainly, it’s not your fault.
Second lesson: Take responsibility for everything. Even if you do not feel like it’s true, do it anyway. The moment you allow an excuse, you have chosen to lose at this MOT (Moment of Truth). You choose to win or you choose to lose, but the choice is always yours.
When you make an excuse, you are willingly giving away your power. You are giving dominion of yourself to others and to so-called circumstances. Never give your power away. If you want to be lucky, put yourself in a position to be lucky every day. If bad luck always happens to you, then stop doing dumb things that puts you in harm’s way.
If your sales and profits stink, then currently you stink. If your bad bosses are keeping you down, then why do you allow it, or why do you work for them? If you have money issues, you must realize it’s not the money’s fault. You may have work-ethic issues — skill issues, attitude issues, game plan issues, etc. — but the one thing you don’t have is a money issue. You can’t have money issues if you don’t have money. Stop blaming pieces of paper.
Where you are at, good or bad, is based upon what you thought about and acted upon months or even years ago. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You may not like it, but the world is fair in all of its unfairness. If you don’t like your sales numbers, then fix them. If you don’t like your profits, then fix them. If you don’t like your relationships, then fix them. No whining, no excuses; just fix it.
Start looking for people who will hold you accountable to be as great as you can possibly be. Stop looking for people who allow you to be the biggest victim you can be. People who allow you to be a victim are professional victims themselves, looking to feel better through your repeated victimhood. Birds of a feather….
I once had a friend who developed oral cancer. After surgery, he began to smoke again. This same friend had been divorced three times and was dating the exact replica of the first three wives — a relationship that was toxic for him. One day he asked for my advice. I told him to figure out exactly what emotion he was fulfilling by continuously putting himself in a position of pain and misery. He was angered by my advice and continued to wrap himself in a blanket of victimhood. He did this without me as friend, because to be a “friend” on his terms would have required me to enable his victimhood.
Who do you enable? How are you enabling yourself? Don’t be a victim. Stop it!
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