Excuses vs Reasons

This morning I attended a neighborhood community meeting.

The meeting leader announced many ideas to improve our neighborhood.

Ideas like how we should provide trash bags at selected local points for dog owners (so they can scoop their dogs' poop). How we should weed out untamed grass and wild flowers that giving unpleasant look at some houses. Sending out friendly reminder to fix broken fences. And bunch of another great solutions.

It was a fascinating observation.

I've noticed that no matter which ideas that was discussed, there's always two different parties debating the issue.

One group gave out 10 different excuses why those ideas will never work. They listed out lots compelling arguments why this can fail and those won't be realistic, and so on and so on. The opposite group gave out 10 different reasons on why we should do it and CAN do it. They lay out a good plan to attack the problem and brainstorm various choices for solutions.

I've noticed that generally in life, we are faced with either excuses to not to do it, or reasons to do it.

Some of us will hesitate, look back, and too scared to make things happen. They justify their own failures with bunch of excuses. We all have heard them.

I'm too old...
I'm too young...
It's too late for me...
My family will understand why I don't finish that degree...

But, there are some that will ignore those excuses. Instead of give in, they think differently. They see that it's possible to overcome the issues, whatever it is. They see failures as stepping stones to success.

I'm still alive so let's do it!
It's never too late to start something good!
There's no time like NOW!
Work hard so my family can have better future!

Hopefully you're in this elite class.

So what would you like to do? Do you want to be stuck with excuses? Or are your reasons strong enough to get you to the next level, of where you want to be?

It is so easy to blame it on excuses. The real art is to keep going and pursue whatever you're pursuing, because you have meaningful reasons to do it.

So from now on, stop having excuses! No more excuses! The only time you say "excuse me" is when you need to go to the bathroom. :)