My grandma always used to say...

And made us recite...whenever she felt we were making an excuse:

Excuses
are tools of incompetence
They build monuments of nothingness
Those who specialize in them seldom accomplish anything

I thought of that as I was writing a response. That phrase is taped to my fridge and I find myself reciting it when I make excuses and it often motivates me to do the right thing. :)

My father -- a one-time Marine (well... once a Marine, always a Marine... but I digress) -- used to tell us that excuses are nothing more than an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of our personal choices. 

Others might disagreee, but I think he was 100% right. 

Certainly, there are cir****tances that impact our decisions, and sometimes we feel the desire/need to explain why we made a certain choice... but, ultimately, we make our own choices and live with the consequences.

Lora

Both of those are great!

these things on excuses really apply to something I am going through in my family life right now...thanks

I totally agree with both of those sayings... and take them to heart, too.  Too often it's easy to try to rationalize a poor decision or behavior.  It's one of the things that aggravates me the most... when people act as if the world is conspiring against them instead of realizing that their own conscious choices have led them to their current destination.

I challenge one and all to take responsibility for your actions, thoughts and decisions whether they are positive and negative instead of rationalizing and justifying them.  Once you take responsibility for all the good AND bad, you truly see your life change... because you realize that no one but you really makes a change in your life.  No one but you can choose your ultimate course...

Empowerment at it's best! 


tori

That made the wall of fame in my office!  What is her name so I can give her credit??

Mildred Fernandez

:)

I love you grandma! Rest in Peace!

haha that's awesome... it is on my whiteboard at work too!! (I am a supervisor of a lately poor performing team)

 I work with kids in the foster care system - many of them have behavior problems - I used to make each one of them write out "right is always right - wrong is always wrong - wrong will never be right and right will NEVER be wrong" and read it on the way out the door everyday - now I am going to have them add that phrase - and my teenager too .....  Maybe some of my coworkers - and for certain me....  I love it - 

as I posted above, I put that quote on my whiteboard at work.
I also have:
"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary"