Tag: excuses

Score touchdowns

When a sale fell through I grew frustrated. I cursed the missed opportunity and fell into self pity.

I wondered how I could put so much passion into something and come up empty. The presupposition being I was giving maximum effort, doing everything right and just experiencing unwarranted bad luck. I even thought maybe my despondency might portend a lucky break on the horizon.

If my efforts are not producing results then it is up to me to change my approach. Blaming bad luck is no more acceptable than accepting failure.

In the end it is my job to score touchdowns, win enough games to make the playoffs, then win every playoff game through the championship. Bad luck, tough competition, blown calls, missed chances are nothing but excuses.

I cannot accept excuses in that scenario. I cannot accept excuses in any scenario.

Protecting my ego

Sometimes I lose focus when I exercise.

I begin full of enthusiasm but as I tire I think about quitting or easing up.

I fixate on the time I have left. I ask myself why am I training so hard? I think I should pace myself or quit early.

The same is true with my career objectives. I start full of enthusiasm but when it becomes difficult I begin to pull back.

My mind wanders. I day dream about winning the lottery, catalog excuses for failure or wonder if I should look for a new job.

The fear I can’t achieve my objective, initially or consistently makes me fall back on my default objective, protecting my ego. It is seductively easy to accept failure and find an excuse. Staying focused and on task is not simple or immediate. It is a choice made every day, every minute, often multiple times a day.

“It can’t be done”

The market is too saturated we don’t have the right features, I wasn’t trained. If you have worked in sales you know all the excuses for failure.

I know. I have managed many sales people. I have heard all the excuses. I have also been a sales person. I have used the excuses.

In the end there were only the jobs I hit my objective and was rewarded and jobs I missed my objective and was dismissed. I have been fired many times. I haven’t to use a baseball teen batted 1.000.

In sports the objective is clearer. You can say the defense was too hard or you didn’t have a good scheme but in the end you still didn’t score or win the game. Emotionally we naturally gravitate to excuses because they relieve the tension.

Even as you are reading this you are thinking he is a hard ass, he is too narrow focused I don’t like this all or nothing attitude. You are going back to the squares and seeing what is easiest to see and accept. And if you do what you have always done you get what you always got.

Don’t look at life as an emotional have and have not. Identify your objective, strive for it, achieve it or not then set the next objective. In your career and business life you will be much more focused and stress free.

Break past limitations

A good coach, boss, leader, trainer drill Sargent, etc is someone that pushes you to break past the limitations you believe exist. There is an alchemy that occurs when you are at the point of breaking but choose to go forward instead. You find a gear, a new expanse of existence. Like the example in a previous post, you start to see the circles.

And like the circles you don’t see them at first. Someone tells you to keep looking. You might not know they are there. Then they disappear. Then your mind starts to see them. Being objective focused is the circles. The squares are emotions, ego, politics, games, excuses, accepting and rationalizing not achieving the objective.