How to Push Beyond the Excuse

Learning how to push beyond the excuse will give you the focus and momentum to walk out your unique design. There is often so much happening around us in this 24/7 noisy world that it’s easy to get off track. Before you know it, you’ve gotten so far behind that you aren’t even aware of where the start is anymore.

When the noise gets too much, the excuses begin to pop up like weeds in an untended garden. Even when things aren’t noisy, if you want to find an excuse, you will easily step up and volunteer. There is always a reason or an excuse, but you have to find the determination to push beyond and stop being devoted to excuses.

Reasons to do have to be bigger
than excuses not to do it.
– Kathryn Lang

What Do You Want

How many times a day do we ask other people what they want? If you have kids and they are currently at home, it’s probably more times than you can count. We ask them the question with the expectation they will provide an answer, and then we can either point them in the right direction or get it done for them so we can go back to our day.

They want something enough to interrupt what we are doing. They ask. They follow through after the asking.

But do we?

Do we know what we want? Do we stop to ask for it? Do we follow through with what’s required?

If we are going to get past the excuses, we have to definitively know what we want so we have a reason big enough that it will be more important and more powerful than the excuses. 

4 Ways to Push Beyond

Know the Foundation

It starts with loving God in a personal way that is beyond the Sunday preaching and what your grandmother said. It is one-on-one time and investment. When you set this firm foundation, then you will have a position to gain clarity on what really matters. 

Build Up the Walls

Relationships build the walls that hold up our best lives. Being invested in others and encouraging them in their journey will fuel the ability to get what we need to get done. But others have to be more important than “What will I get from this.” While we need to care for God’s temple (that’s you, by the way), we don’t need to step on others to make it happen.

When we invest in others, we move closer to the place where we will be so invested in living out unique design that nothing can talk us out of it (not even ourselves).

Site the Target 

When you are aiming for your target, you need to line up your actions to hit that target. Define where you are going. Layout the steps that will get you there. Measure your choices against those two points. If you stay aware of where you are going, it’s easier to know when you are off track. If you take your eyes off the target, you will end up with a crooked field. 

Beware the Little Slumber

The little slumber moments will eat up your day. “Just five more minutes of sleep.” “I’ll sit down and watch one show.” “I’ll scroll through social for a minute just to give myself a break.” The little bits peck away at your big picture until there is nothing left of your day.

Learning to Push Beyond

I made a plan. 

I do that a lot around here.

But this time was different. I made a plan based in reality and not just aiming at my BIG DREAM goals. I took into consideration my time, my determination, and my surroundings.

The first few days, everything went according to plan. By the fourth day, people quit cooperating with a plan they didn’t even know existed. The vacation rental next door filled up, and people were out during my morning quiet time. People showed up to work on the new subdivision I have claimed as my personal walking trail, and I had to adjust my path. 

I wanted to quit. If nobody was going to work with me, then how was I supposed to get anything done?

It was an excuse – albeit a good one. But any excuse is simply a distraction trying to hold us back from walking out our purpose and plan.

I could have given in to the excuses, but I became focused on my target so much that I was able to find creative ways to pivot, flex, and adjust to the excuses showing up around me.

What do you really want? Get so determined on that target that you are willing to do what you need to do to push beyond the excuses – because they will show up.

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