This is optimal living daily, making excuses for zaps your motivation, so don't do it. By Tyler DeBoron of Rescology.co, and I'm Justin Molek here to help you find a little bit of inspiration, motivation, or happiness in your day, you get to the e-subscribe or follow by on your favorite podcast after getting new episodes every single day of the year, but for now to get back to another boast and start optimizing your life. Making excuses for zaps your motivation, so don't do it by Tyler DeBoron of Rescology.co. 11-year-old James had a big, impractical idea.
He was going to graduate from high school, before he dismissed what would seem an alarmingly average accomplishment, consider a story. James lived in a rural, more torn Uganda. He lost his entire family to disease by the time he was six, and was raised by his grandmother who didn't even earn enough for the $500-year school tuition. High school diploma was not the default path for James.
He could hardly blame him if he decided that goal was impossible, they should give up and work in the fields. But he didn't. Instead, he and his grandmother devised a long shot of a plan to secure the financing of his tuition. It all started with a goat.
His grandmother sold one of hers and with a proceeds, James bought shoes, clothes, and a bus ticket to the capital city where he'd stay with his aunt. That's where the plan gets more interesting. To get the money necessary for school, he'd sneak into the President's compound and ask for a scholarship. He would require stealing of art-wire fence and getting past armed guards.
Besides, though, he learned that he'd be greeted warmly and given money for tuition. So that's what he did, and to everyone's amazement, it worked. Today, now in his 30s, James has two master's degrees and is a leader with a great job. Making excuses and giving up with an easy and certainly forgiven.
The hurdles between 11-year-old James and James of today were immense, but something deep inside compelled him to take responsibility for his life into whatever it took to realize his goal. At the age of 11, James had mastered his psychology and committed to a dream. His story is heroic, but it's also explained by psychology. Regardless of your station in life, there's a link between excuses you make and the success you achieve.
If you have big plans, but you also see big hurdles ahead, you'll need to learn to be like James. Excuses, read more failure. We've all experienced disappointment. We don't get the promotion you wanted.
You fail a test. In a foreign relationship crumbles. When it happens, you have two choices for a house response. You can ask yourself, look at I've done differently, or you can tell yourself, it was my fault, so there's nothing I could have done.
When you choose a second option, you're doomed. You're studied college by the journal psychology. Making fraudulent excuses about schoolwork directly correlated with lower GPAs. The more excuses you make, the worse you perform.
But why? Not enough research has been done to draw definite conclusion, but here's a theory. Making excuses now has a cascading effect on how you behave in the future. Excuses away to externalize failure, blame it on something else.
We've all done it, and we all know why we do it. It makes you feel better. But when you externalize failure, it also makes you feel like the outcomes in your life are out of your control. And when you lack control, it's difficult to find motivation to work harder.
My father, if you're not in charge. When you lack motivation, you perform as suffers. The chain reaction that follows in excuse ensures failure not just now, but spiraling into the future as well. Of course, that's just one path.
You can take another. Personal responsibility, read success. James Robertson, yes, another James, has been offered a new car multiple times by complete strangers. In fact, a neighbor offered to be his personal shiver.
Others have offered to pay the insurance bill for whatever time you're not able to pay the insurance bill for whatever new car he ends up with. Why is this generosity coming to him? It could be because the Detroit Free Press wrote an article about him. Why do they do that?
Because he walks to work every day. Nothing impressive he say, what was commute is 21 miles. James has oiled his job when his car broke down and Detroit buses stopped serving his route. He woke up one morning and just started walking and then he kept doing it.
Tough times on last. Tough people do. That's what James dad told him. He must have stuck.
When people heard about his daily marathon commute, people across the country jumped at the opportunity to help someone who was willing to persevere. That's right in line with what researchers at the University of Missouri Columbia found when they studied the connection between future commitment, the results to make something happen. And excuse making. They tested the excuses their subjects would make or not make while completing tasks and how that lined up with the results to improve.
Unsurprisingly, those who made the fewest excuses were the most committed to improving themselves. The point of the story is not so much about generous strangers as it is about what created them. Who would blame James for giving up in such a dire situation? He could have quit, gone on public assistance and fell sorry for himself.
None of the hardships he endured were his fault. James didn't see it that way though. That's why strangers are rushing to lend a hand. It's why people who take responsibility for their own situations regardless if they deserve the blame for it or not tend to end up in a better place when the dust settles.
When making excuses allows you to externalize your failures and taking responsibility does the opposite. Taking responsibility leads to introspection. You study everything that went wrong and you ask yourself, what could I have done differently? And what can I do now to fix it?
When you ask yourself those questions, if you like your distill and control of your destiny, when you control your destiny, you're motivated to make it the best and one possible. And when you're motivated, you work better, smarter and harder. You get what you want. How to stop making excuses.
We all want to be the best we can be at and whatever we do. Like excuses are easy to make and genuine commitments to improve our heart. If you want to be the person who takes responsibility and gets what you want, they can all come down to the stories you tell yourself when you feel overwhelmed or fail. If you're out of shape, do tell yourself it's just your genetics that your poor eating habits are too strong to break.
Or do tell yourself you just have a right solution yet, but you'll keep looking and trying. If you work too much and don't have time for fun, do tell yourself that people demand too much from you or do tell yourself you don't prioritize your own time well enough. If you don't have enough money for the life you want, do tell yourself your job just doesn't pay enough or do tell yourself that you're not communicating your value well enough for that it's time to find better work. In each of those cases, there are two stories.
When you can control and when you can't. If you focus on the story you can't control, you'll spiral towards failure. If you focus on the story you can, you'll spiral towards success. Today, take a second to ask which of those stories you tell yourself.
What excuses are you making in your own life? And how do you change the story you tell yourself to make success more likely? You just listen to the post titles, making excuses is after motivation. So don't do it.
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And at the superpower.com and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership. Thank you, Tyler. Those were true stories by the way. The James and Uganda and the other end Detroit.
You can find links to the full stories in this article. And then you can find this article linked in this episode of description and at what I'll tell you how to ask. It's all like you comes down to locus of control, which has come up a few times over the thousands of episodes of the show. If you're not familiar, all that really means is do you believe you're in control of your own life or do you believe outside forces are?
If you have an internal locus of control, you believe your choice is in action pretty much determine your outcomes. The opposite is having an external locus of control, meaning you tend to attribute your successes and failures to things like luck, fate, or other people. And making excuses is a pretty classic sign of an external locus of control, blaming something outside of ourselves. We're trying to move that more towards an internal locus of control can really have a positive impact in many areas of life.
And those stories were great examples. So thank you, Tyler. Hope you found this one helpful or inspiring. Have a great rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow as usual where you're optimal life.
I'll be back tomorrow.