December 21, 2015
By Tami Rubino, BioSpace Hiring and Branding Guru
Many college football fans were packed into stadiums or glued to TV screens this past weekend watching their favorite teams battle it out for playoff positioning and poll rankings. As a lukewarm football fan, most of my entertainment came from observing the behavior of my diehard family members and friends. One thing I know for certain is that sports fanatics are great at making excuses.
If a play produces a favorable outcome, devoted fans cheer, clap, hoot, holler and give their best rendition of Billy “White Shoes” Johnson’s “Funky Chicken” end zone celebration. When their beloved team fails to advance the ball, however, these now somber spectators wear out the buttons on their DVR analyzing every move on the field with meticulous detail and bloviating about why it didn't work.
Excuse making is habit forming
The habit of making excuses is learned early in life and is well illustrated within my own family and our invisible child named “it-wasn’t-me,” who is always blamed when something gets broken. This is an innate instinct that toddlers employ the first time they spill a glass of milk. Making an excuse is an unconscious form of self-defense that helps a child deflect blame, shame and anxiety.
Let's be honest. Our days would be full of awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassing moments if there were no excuses…
•“I'm sorry I can't come to your party because I have other plans” VERSUS “I can't come to your party because I just want to go home, put on my sweatpants, crawl in bed and binge watch TV”
•“I don't want to go to the gym because it is so busy at this time of day” VERSUS “I don't want to go the gym because I’m feeling lazy and I’d rather eat this pint of ice cream.”
These excuses make us feel better about ourselves and justify our actions and decisions. It's tough to admit the truth about ourselves, and quite frankly, it might be devastating to our self-esteem if we did admit the truth 100% of the time. However, don’t fall into the trap of letting excuses be the barrier between where you are today and where you want to be in the future.
Just stop it already
Most motivational speakers and success gurus will tell you to stop making excuses…period! There are thousands of books and blogs written on this very topic. I have a different perspective because we are hardwired to make excuses and your DNA is not something that’s easily changed. To put a stake in the ground and say, “I’m done making excuses,” is setting yourself up for failure. The key is establishing an excuse protocol—a process with criteria that allows you to determine when you need to come clean and be completely transparent.
Understand the difference between reasons and excuses
Excuses are inherently perceived as someone’s opinion whereas reasons are generally facts that can be supported by an outside party or attributed to circumstance beyond your control. In other words, reasons are objective basis points for making decisions and legitimate explanations that help you build a recommendation for a solution. And, yes, sometimes reasons can be a justification for something happening or not happening.
When you start making excuses, you’re not collecting information anymore and you’re certainly not offering solutions. Your mind is made up and you’re simply seeking to defend or attach blame for a particular outcome. This behavior can have dire impacts to personal relationships, work settings and your professional reputation, ranging from a negative perception that you’re unreliable, flaky, overly defensive or worst of all dishonest.
Criteria for developing an excuse-making protocol
After you’ve determined that you’ve moved beyond reasoning to excuse-making, you have to take a moment to self-reflect and be completely authentic with yourself in order to determine next steps. In other words, be real about your excuse-making habits and patterns.
Next, you need to accept the fact that everyone makes excuses from time-to-time, which also means everyone has a built-in excuse detector. So you have to ask yourself…is it really worth risking your reputation to make up an excuse? Or are you better off being honest?
Finally, ask yourself the following questions to understand the motivation behind your excuse:
•Is the truth going to hurt someone’s feelings?
•Is this going to cause me or someone else utter humiliation?
•Is this a personal issue that no one else needs to know about?
If you answer “yes” to any of the above questions, you may be “justified” in making up an excuse. Consider saying to a coworker “I don’t want to be on your team because I don’t like you.” While that may be the absolute truth, the only outcome is a severed relationship and hurt feelings, which is unnecessary. The best alternative in a situation like this is to provide reasons for not being on the team (other commitments) and offer solutions (recommend another coworker who might be a better fit).
Other good questions to ponder:
•Is this excuse preventing me from reaching my goals?
•Is the excuse harmful to my family, friends and coworkers in any way?
•Am I avoiding punishment or negative consequences?
•Will the outcome be the same if I make this excuse?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, you need to rethink your strategy. Ultimately, you have to realize that making excuses is actually inhibiting your ability to learn and move forward—and you’re likely hurting others in the process. Consider an athlete having an official’s call cost them the game. Should they scream at the referee and demand justice? At this point, the outcome can’t be changed so assigning blame doesn’t do any good. It is part of sports and it is very much a part of everyday life.
This is especially important for children as they are developing their values and character. Protecting kids from disappointment or shrouding them from responsibility for their actions will result in grownups who can’t be honest or feel ‘wronged’ every time things don’t go their way. This is fertile ground for excuse-making to be the go-to mechanism for getting off the hook.
So if you find yourself operating outside of acceptable boundaries where excuses are piling up, hurting others and holding you back, take responsibility for your actions, learn from it and move on. You’ll soon be making progress toward where you want to be.
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