NO EXCUSES PLEASE!

(4 mins read)

Many of us are closely following the events happening at Twitter. Elon Musk made a huge investment of USD 44 billion when he bought Twitter and immediately started shaping the culture and disturbing the corporate lives of all the employees there. Although these events are interesting for people, leaders and especially HR professionals, today’s post is about one single element of the Musk-Twitter Saga… Let us think what we could learn from Elon Musk.

Elon Musk is a visionary who, without any EXCUSE, continues to strive extremely hard towards his vision every day. So far, he has been extremely successful as the Tesla or SpaceX CEO. There is a lot to learn from Musk on pushing hard every second and minute to achieve what is unachievable to others, to use every single hour during the day for chasing dreams.

EXCUSES vs. OPPORTUNITIES

One week has 168 hours for all. Each one of us has exactly the same time every week to use. We sleep for 56 hours. We work for 50 hours. The rest, 62 hours, we spend with our family, friends or we enjoy our hobbies. It’s totally up to us how we use this time and we could use it effectively or waste it. There is one group of people who are not successful and there is another group of people who are accomplished. Do we know what makes the difference? People from the first group look for excuses and people from the other group look for opportunities. Maybe those who look for excuses think too much, maybe they are  too lazy, maybe they don’t have time and they have different priorities. Excuses facilitate our failure and they are like a narcotic. Initially, we feel good, but we get the bill and pay the price later.

Some people focus on reaching for excuses, because they are easy to make and there are plenty of them out there. Looking for opportunities requires commitment, hard work and, in many cases, sacrifice of not watching another TV series or enjoying that extra hour of sleep. Instead of looking for opportunities, they prefer to continue enjoying a delusive peace in today’s comfort zone. Its so easy to find excuses why we should not do something and It’s so difficult to find motivation to change it. If you want to do something, you will be looking for solutions, you will find a way. If you don’t want to do anything, you will be looking for excuses.

In some specific cases or situations, making excuses becomes like a habit, a really bad habit. There are some people who achieve even the PEM level (Professional Excuse Master). Keep in mind that if you excel in excuse making, it will be difficult to be successful at anything else. Making excuses is like living permanently in the past, if you want to move to tomorrow you would need to stop with your bad habits and change your mindset.

NO EXCUSES PLEASE!

Now, we can take all the above to a personal level. We all know WHY this is so important, but not many know HOW to do it. The first and the most important step is that we need to accept a complete responsibility for your life. The day we understand it, it will be our last day of making excuses, leading to frustrations and disappointments, and the first day of hard work, discomfort, happiness and joy. Below there are some specific tips you could implement into four critical areas of our life: HEALTH, PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL and WEALTH. For each dimension there are four specific actions you can implement immediately. No need to participate in training, no need to have a coach. Its totally up to you!

HEALTH

Tired… get some REST or SLEEP

Out of shape… EXERCISE

Anxious… TAKE a deep breath

Feeling alone… MEET a friend

PERSONAL

Don’t have time… ELIMINATE time dumps

Uninspired… TAKE a break and RELAX

Overthinking… TAKE an action

Feeling lost in life… HAVE a dream

PROFESSIONAL

Seems complicated… SIMPLIFY it

Don’t know… LEARN or ASK questions to understand

Distracted… just FOCUS

Failed… ADMIT mistakes

WEALTH

Out of money… STOP spending and START saving

No retirement fund… START building one today

Don’t know how to invest… TAKE a course and learn

Have little investment… KEEP calm and keep investing

Stop making excuses

Stop complaining

Stop blaming

Stop procrastinating

Stop having self-doubts

Stop waiting for the “right time”

Remember that excuses make today easy, but they make tomorrow hard.

The “no excuse” mindset and discipline make today hard, but it makes tomorrow easy.

Life is too short for excuses!