Our daily lives have become a routine of forcing ourselves to get out of bed, enduring horrendous workloads, taking care of our immediate families and trying to decongest ourselves from all the stress. Try recalling a time when you were passionate about your work or exercise plan. It was probably in the first few days or weeks of getting in to it – yet, as time went by, boredom and drudgery set it.
Nowadays, you can easily find yourself making excuses to avoid the things you have to do and instead burn your hard earned money and spare time on things that offer instant gratification: vices, shopping, procrastination and TV reruns. Life does not get easier when you make excuses. It gets harder. By putting off your responsibilities, you rob yourself of the discipline needed to equip yourself to deal with the challenges of life. These can pile up into bigger problems if you keep procrastinating.
The need for outlets and breaks from real life is very understandable but you still need to safeguard your habits from temptations and distractions that take you away from your goals. Here are some tips on how you can stop yourself from making common excuses.
Do not procrastinate.
Responsibilities do not go away just because you put them off for tomorrow. You still have to pay the bills, feed your pets, keep your household clean and send your kids to school. Learn proper time management techniques. Schedule your tasks and goals into things that you need to do, things you want to do and things that are optional. Life won’t stop even if you do, so learn to adapt to the flow and make it work for yourself.
Be proactive.
If you let your emotions take a hold of you while you go about your tasks then you open yourself to being tempted. When work becomes too menial, tiring and boring, you sneak out during office hours to smoke or grab a quick snack. If you can muster the willpower to choose your response you can decide to be the better person: stay at work and accomplish the tasks you have left. Not only will you feel good about yourself, you could be considered for promotion. People around you do notice when you’re becoming a bit more responsible.
Rekindle your passion for things you like.
It is easy to forget that we should enjoy life despite all its tasks and duties. We make excuses because we need to forget, even for a few moments, that life can be mundane most of the time. If you can find creative and engaging hobbies and outlets, you can feel good enough to balance the harder parts of your day with the enjoyable aspects.
Take the initiative to get things done.
That overflowing garbage can is not going to take care of itself. You can convince yourself that you’re too busy getting other things done that “Sooner or later someone’s going to get to it.” Before you know it, the garbage starts to stink. Everybody else in the office is probably just waiting for someone to do it, but you shouldn’t take it against them. By taking initiative, you’ll learn about how much power you have over the things around you, if only you choose to act.
Clean up your own mess.
You submitted a crucial report long after it was due and now your whole department is under the management’s gun. Your fears and instincts are telling you to avoid trouble and pin the blame on someone else. You might succeed and save face, but someone else will have to suffer. If you’re the type of person who can live with that then you’ve doomed yourself to a life in which you won’t grow, and neither will all your endeavors. Be courageous enough to man up. You might not save your job, but you’ve saved yourself for another one and new chances to grow. The universe can only be held and belong to those who choose to be responsible.
Get out of your comfort zone.
Fear keeps you stagnant and you can always tell yourself that you’re comfortable as you are. Ask that girl out. Offer input to your department’s upcoming project. Learn to surf even if you feel scared to. Change your frame of mind to reflect your growing dimensions: it only takes a little courage to decide to move from where and how you are, and you’ll always be glad you stretched yourself.
