Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 116 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

The Reasons We Make Excuses

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 116 of our Trek. Yesterday we explored the attributes of a person who achieves results. The opposite of results is excuses. All of us fall victim to making excuses in most areas of life.  So, over the next three days, we will look at the reasons we make excuses, the types of excuses we make, and how we can eliminate excuses forever. Please make sure you listen to all three episodes.

In celebration of our 100th day of our Wisdom-Trek, please check out Wisdom-Trek.com and sign up for our drawing for a free Wisdom-Trek t-shirt that will take place on October 5th. We are giving away 7 Wisdom-Trek t-shirts.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The day just seemed to fly by today as most days do.  I was able to accomplish some of the tasks that needed completed, but there will be some left for another day. I was interviewed for a podcast by a businessman in Australia today which was quite extensive. It will not air until November or December, though, since it is a new podcast that is just getting ready to launch. I will keep you informed as new episodes are released in which I have had the privilege of being interviewed. We should be able to announce several more podcast interviews that will be released over the next few weeks.

Many of these discussions bring out our Trek throughout our lives. While we have had our share of "valleys" that we have trekked through, we have also experienced some glorious summits on our way. It would be easy to gloss over some of these valleys and make excuses, but the realization is that all the choices that were made were our choices based on the experience and knowledge that we had at that time.

It is easy to fall into the habit of making excuses when our trek of life does not turn out as we desired.  For the next three days of our Trek, we will examine in detail the subject of excuses. So, let’s put all our excuses aside and head out on the trail. One quote from a very wise man, Benjamin Franklin, reminds us, "He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else."

 

Do you ever catch yourself making excuses when things don’t turn out as you had expected? Have you ever neglected taking responsibility for the events and circumstances of your life? Or have you ever tried to explain away why you didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t or simply wouldn’t do something? These are all subtle signs that indicate you are living a life of excuses, which prevents you from living to your full potential.  And, in Jesus's words, your full potential is a rich and satisfying life.

 

1. What Are Excuses?

Excuses are rationalizations we make to ourselves about people, events, and circumstances. They are invented reasons we create to defend our behavior, to neglect taking a particular kind of action, or to simply negate responsibility. Excuses are in essence a means of placing blame of an internal problem on an external condition.  

2. Reasons We Make Excuses

There are many reasons why people make excuses. In fact, everyone has different reasons for making them. However, when it boils down to it, all excuses are based on FEAR. We only make excuses for the following main reasons:

Fear of failure

Fear of embarrassment

Fear of success

Fear of change

Fear of uncertainty

Fear of responsibility

Fear of making mistakes

Fear based on a perceived lack of confidence or resources

To eliminate excuses from our lives,