In this post, my goal is to effectively break down the source of excuses which we'll find to be our subsconsious mind's need to rationalize. I'll also break down what it takes to start moving toward the immeasurable quality of what I call objective-self-honesty. Finally, I'll give advice as to how we can move away from being a rationalizing excuse creator, and move toward being an objective-self-honest person.


So let's start by breaking down the word excuse. The meaning I'll be talking about is defined as an "attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify." Justify is defined as "to show or prove to be right or reasonable." A comparable way of looking at this is the term JUSTIFY which is defined as "attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate." So in other words, an excuse or a justification can be either true and accurate, or completely UNTRUE and INACCURATE.

This is an EXTREMELY important concept to understand if you're someone looking to make some changes in your life. Why? Because you really have to understand that your subconscious mind is WIRED to rationalize and make excuses when things don't go your way. Stick with me, I'm going to explain this in detail.

Look, the ability to CREATE your life and your own self to be however you want really comes down to being able to cut out the excuses and take action. Excuses are really the manifestation of RATIONALIZATION. Guess what, your brain is biologically programmed to rationalize. This isn't something I'm making up, this has been proven time and time again within psychological studies. "In psychology and logic, rationalization is the process of constructing a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process. It is a defense mechanism."

So for example, let's say a shy man avoids dating because of anxiety around he experiences around women. He might not want to face the fact that he has this anxiety. So instead, he tells himself that he isn't dating because he really wants to focus on his career and put that first; he wants to get ahead first and worry about the opposite sex when he has achieved success. Of course, this is actually bogus. It is a made up story, an excuse that spawned from rationalization.

How about this: A person steals because he is selfish and greedy. However, his brain DEMANDS that he not think of himself as a bad person. Therefore, he decides that the reason he is stealing is because society is unjust; the rich did not deserve their wealth, and stealing is correcting an injustice. Again, an excuse that has spawned from rationalization.

So why are our minds programmed to rationalize? Answer: to maintain order and homeostasis, to avoid emotional pain, and ultimately to promote survival by avoiding painful emotional unease. In psychological terms, to avoid cognitive dissonance. Now, you might be thinking "I don't do that." .....Yes you do. In fact, someone who claims to not be a rationalizing machine is almost certainly so deep within the grips of it, they are unable to recognize it. We ALL rationalize, we ALL make excuses. The question is HOW MUCH?

If you aren't the person you want to be, if you don't have the life that you really want to have, it is most likely due to your OWN rationalizations. You see, rationalizing makes things okay. It makes it okay that you didn't get what you wanted. When things are okay, you don't take action. Period. The cycle goes like this: get inspired by something (maybe the video above), feel motivated, decide to make a change, maybe take a bit of action to make it happen, lose the feeling an hour, a day, a week later, forget about your decision, go back to your day to day living, have a somewhat discontent funk around you because you know deep down that you're weak and not in control, rationalizing brain takes over and creates some sort of an excuse, the excuse is very logical and makes sense even when you verbalize it to someone else, go back to your same situation; your same self; your same life. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat..........

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then you die.

What a life!!!!!!


The cycle goes on and on and on for most of us. Very few people ever truly make a change in their lives. Ever. Most people go through life REACTING to what comes along, rarely if ever doing anything proactive to create themselves and their life how they really want it. After all, it's MUCH easier to rationalize after the fact, create excuses, and live a life of maintenance.

Here's a question that I think your intuition will have an answer for; will someone who is consistently going through this cycle EVER experience life to the fullest? Will they ever have a life of THEIR OWN DESIGN? Will they feel confident and proud of who they are as a person? You and I both know the answer is a resounding NO. Will they ever put themselves through the pain of working out everyday and eating plain food? No way. It's much easier to blame their fitness and health levels on genetics then to take that kind of action.

So are we all doomed? NOPE. All of us can overcome our rationalizing mind through AWARENESS (hopefully this post will provide the start of that) and PRACTICE (that's totally up to you). Becoming a objective-self-honest person and overcoming rationalization is just like a muscle! It has to be trained. This is an cliche example, but here's a person who DIDN'T rationalize, didn't create excuses, and TOOK ACTION instead. Michael Jordan. He got cut from his high school basketball team. He admits to going home, locking himself in his room, and crying for hours. It would have been SOOO easy for him to have rationalized to himself and said "I just wasn't meant for basketball, I'm just not gifted enough, I just don't have the genetics for it, I'm not tall enough, etc. etc. etc." But he didn't. Instead he went on to be the best basketball player of all time by TAKING ACTION. He inspired countless amounts of people. He became a massive force for good and a role model of possibility. He was my childhood hero and he's still to this day one of my heros. The world is a better place because Michael Jordan told his rationalizing brain to F*** off. My hope is that you and I can start to do the same.




So why would a person do this? Why would someone cheapen their lives and rationalize their lack of action? Well first of all they usually aren't aware that they're even doing it. Their subconscious mind is RUNNING THE SHOW. Scary. The subconscious mind wants to maintain the 'okay' feeling, keeping things in balance, taking the path of least resistance, avoiding excess energy expenditure. When you're REAL with yourself, when you point the finger where it belongs (right at yourself), it creates emotional pain and imbalance. It FORCES you to TAKE ACTION to solve the problem. What's the path of least resistance? Taking action, or making excuses? Obviously making excuses.

So how do YOU rationalize and make excuses? Get honest. How have YOU engaged in this life sucking behavior? I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I use to say "the reason I'm not ripped is because of my genetics." It definitely WAS NOT the fact that I was a sugar addict and couldn't go for more than a day without indulging and stuffing my face with massive amounts of the stuff. Nope, it was because of my genetics. What a JOKE.

My goal for this post was to really solidify these things in my own mind and hopefully help you to start along the path of becoming an objectively-self-honest person. Becoming someone who is honest and REAL with themselves on a consistent basis. Someone that takes action when they find something they don't like about themselves, rather then making excuses. Becoming someone who doesn't make excuses and instead takes action. Someone who is proactive and creates their selves and their life HOW THEY WANT.

So let's go out there and start to apply this concept. Know that your subconscious mind is a rationalizing, excuse creating machine. Also know that you can overcome this through awareness and practice. Start to manage your mind. Start to manage your excuses and get real with yourself. When you find yourself saying something like this to yourself "I didn't get this because of this" or "I'm this way because of this thing," STOP, become aware that your subconscious is rationalizing and take charge, get real, and TAKE ACTION.

Thanks for reading. Anyone can leave comments so please do.

Create your life how you want it.

Sam