It's Time To Stop Making Excuses - Face Your Fears To Create Real Happiness
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Stop Making Excuses



Is it time to stop making excuses?

How’s your life…really?

What’s the honest answer? Are you feeling good and making progress?

Or settling for less and making excuses?

Have you achieved true life satisfaction yet?

Or are you just going through the motions?

When you feel stuck and confused, you have the benefit of KNOWING that something has gone wrong.

But lots of people haven’t even gotten to that point yet.

And the reason is their excuses.

They’re not-so-happily living an okay life.

Let’s say their relationship is okay. But it’s not great. It’s definitely not lighting anyone up anymore. But the partner looks good (on paper at least). So shouldn’t you just learn to be happy with it instead of trying something new?

Or maybe it’s the job. It’s not paying you enough or promoting you soon enough. Or maybe it’s a dead end job entirely. But you like your boss well enough. And you like your co-workers. There are just enough things to keep you from totally dreading your day that you’ve almost forgotten that your job…well…sucks

If you’re need to convince yourself that something in your life “isn’t that bad”, then trust me babes…it’s bad.



We all have a lot of excuses for the way we live. The obvious ones are the reasons we give for not going after something we want (I don’t know how, I don’t have enough money/time, I’m too old)

But there is a more insidious kind of excuse: the excuses we use to tell ourselves that everything is okay…when it really isn’t.

Let’s be clear: if you have to convince yourself that your relationship is okay, it isn’t.

If you have to convince yourself that you love your job, then you don’t.

Deep down inside you know the truth but you’re too uncomfortable to just admit it.



You’re settling for mediocrity! You’re settling for meh. You’re settling for something less than and ignoring that little voice inside you that’s saying “Yo! This isn’t it.”

And the longer you ignore that voice, the worse it gets. You’re creating cognitive dissonance– a disconnect between what you feel and what you do.

You may not consciously be aware of the internal friction, but it’s there inside you, compounding your unhappiness and undermining your own confidence.

Cognitive dissonance is the OPPOSITE of living in integrity. It’s the OPPOSITE of authenticity. It’s the OPPOSITE of conscious life creation.

I know all about this because I’ve lived SO MUCH of my life convincing myself that things were fine. I’ve overstayed my welcome in jobs and romantic relationships in particular. And nowhere was that more evident than during my marriage.

I stayed. I pretended things were okay, for a long looooong time. (For much MUCH too long!)

It wasn’t that bad, I thought! We got along okay.

Our life looked good from the outside. So it was a lot easier to ignore the truth of the inside.

Maybe I wasn’t really being ignored, overshone, controlled.

Maybe I wasn’t experiencing the most intense bouts of loneliness in my entire life.

Back then, I had nothing but excuses. But those excuses did not help me or the marriage. They just helped to hide the fact that I was deeply unhappy and afraid to change anything. They wasted time, energy and money.

When you’re truly happy, you don’t need to convince yourself of anything.

You just know it.

And if you’re unhappy, bored or just unsatisfied with life, somewhere deep inside, you also know it.

But you must also realize that you can’t LOGIC your way back into passion or satisfaction or happiness.

Your excuses just mean something needs to change. Something needs to grow. You need to let go, to expand, to move on.

But until you see the reality of the situation, those excuses are just letting you get in your own way! They’re keeping you small and preventing you from taking real action to change the situation.

So the sooner you admit it to yourself, the faster you will move past the problem.

Remember that you were not born to be mediocre!

You were not meant to settle.

And you were definitely not meant to get to the end of your life and think “meh”!

So if you’re settling for less than what your heart knows to be true, it’s time to get tough.

Here are three prompts to help you dig through to the root of the problem:


How To Stop Making Excuses


Why do you think you don’t deserve joy in your life?



A fundamental issue that relates to happiness is always our own sense of self-worth. Many of us are still trapped in an earning (or punishing) mindset. That means you don’t think you truly deserve happiness unless you put in work, effort or struggle. And then you get stuck in the work/effort/struggle phase with no happiness payoff.

Or maybe you’ve never been around people that have allowed themselves to experience joy. Maybe you’ve subconsciously modeled yourself after your parents, who certainly never seem joyful or even particularly satisfied. Sometimes we need to work to acknowledge that the experience of happiness is very much real and attainable.

But you have a right to joy. You have a right to be happy, regardless of worthiness or the need to earn it. What would happen if you shifted your belief structures to reflect that?


If you continue down to make excuses, where will you be in 10 years time?



If you’re in a situation that needs to come to an end, putting things off will seldom make anything any better! Many times if you leave things too long you won’t even have the option of a decision anymore, as one will be made for you.

So really take it heart and think about your life in the future. If you continue to hide from big decisions and make excuses to stay small, what will your life look like in 10 more years? Is that


What’s the REAL reason behind your excuse?



Ultimately, we make excuses because we are afraid: we’re afraid of change, we’re afraid of failure, we’re afraid to hurt someone we care about. But simply realizing that you’re ultimately choosing between fear and unhappiness can make things a lot easier! Just remember fear isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong! Try to reframe it as simply a sign that you’re on the right path. You’re about to level up! And that’s a very cool place to be.




There’s no substitution for your own happiness! And your heart always knows what’s true. So concentrate on doing what it takes to make it happen, even when it’s tough or scary. Your life is totally worth it.




I hope this post inspires you to take some action wherever you might happen to need it!

Good luck with it & let me know how it goes.

Jenn Stevens The Aligned Life




PS Looking for more? You might also want to check out this post about how to integrate your shadow or this one about 5 ways to zap mental blocks.




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It's Time To Stop Making Excuses - Face Your Fears To Create Real Happiness

Jenn

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