making excuses

 And my motto is, "Why put off til tomorrow what you can put off til next week?"  

Usually I am like Charlie.... I just put it off so long I don't need an excuse lol

My "go to" excuses are time /busyness, and tired. Again, they are true....
Excuse: "Between my mini-farm, bed-ridden mom, job and errands - I am too busy and don't have time." OR "I wor****il 1am, I am too nervous to walk in the neighborhood that late"

Truth: I am extremely busy, but that didn't stop me in November / December when I had the same schedule. I can jog the pasture or our short little street after work.

Excuse: "I am too tired (from daily life, working out with the trainer, etc)"
Truth: I do get tired a lot, but I have sudden bursts of energy when it is time to go horseback riding or dog training. I don't have to do a LOT everyday, but I can do SOMETHING everyday

 I agree! It's the damn laptop! I am addicted. I work at a desk all day, then I come home and sit on my arse with my laptop and the TV. I use to justify it because I was doing personal training 2X week(excuse), but had to stop do to a knee injury. Now I am more of a fat blob with excuses and a laptop. I even said I was going to give my lap top up for lent. HAH!!

Please please please give me a surgery date soon-----------I feel like I am in limbo.

Like you, I have a very legitimate reason for not being able to do many kinds of exercise (my knees, particularly the left one that really needs replaced), and there are some days (especially during the winter) when just walking hurts like hell, so it is not an excuse to say "I can't because my knee(s) hurt(s)".  BUT... there are also many days when I just don't feel like doing anything and, if asked, I would use my knees as an excuse.  One of the advantages of being almost 50 years old, though, is that I know that there is no point in making up excuses for myself because -- as you frequently mention to poeple who post about eating something "bad" -- I am only "cheating" myself and I already know that.  I also know that I don't have to do anything I don't want to do and that is fine with me!  I take responsibility for choosing not to exercise by eating less. 

The down side of that, however, is that there are times when that results in just saying "I dont; want to" when I know it is somethign I really SHOULD do.  Occasionally, for example, I climb into bed and realize that I missed a calcium dose, and rather than get up and go downstairs and take it, I just say "forget it".  Perhaps if I felt like a NEEDED an excuse in order NOT to take it, I might actually get up and take it.

Sometimes, however, I think that I do  -- less consciously -- "use" the depression/PTSD as an "excuse".  I often struggle with the lack of motivation and psychological/emotional energy that depression brings, especially because I have a lot of things on my plate that MUST be done and often it is ALL I can do (and some days MORE than I can do) to just get everything done.  Things often get put off for a couple of days because the thought of doing ANYTHING once I am home from work is sometimes overwhelming. I do TRY to be more motivated, but I am also sometimes aware that I give myself "permission" NOT to do something because I am very aware of the depression that day.  I cannot honestly say how often taking advantage of that permission is "good self care" and how often it is "an excuse".  A little of both, I'm sure.

Lora

 Every night when I go to bed I promise myself that tomorrow is going to be the day that I start exercising.  Every morning when I wake up I just plain don't feel like it.  I don't have to go outside to exercise, I have an exercise room, but you know what is also in that room?  My desktop!  I hate my laptop so that is normally not a problem for me.  

I have had new floors and a new paint job on the inside of my house, excuse, I have to do this so the painter can paint in that room.  I piled everything in my exercise room, which was the first room I did with both flooring and painting, so now I have to get it cleaned out.  Oh it was cleaned out between the floors and paint but moved to another room until the painting could be done and now it is piled up again so that rest of the house could be done.  

I used to have an excuse, prior to my father's death, that I couldn't eat right because I had to cook for  him.  I honestly asked my surgeon if I should wait to revise from band to RNY until after my father died.  He said, "NO" thank goodness.  He passed away about 5 1/2 months after my surgery but for 2 of those months, I don't even know how I survived because I was taking care of him 24/7. Now it is so much easier to just go out to eat than to cook, excuse now, I live by myself and my sister normally pays when we go out so it is cheaper.  

Tomorrow's another day, I promise myself that I am getting up tomorrow and exercising.  I saw a picture of me at church yesterday of me prior to surgery and it was a real eye opener, I don't want to go back there, so I am watching everything that goes in my mouth and as I said I promise myself, tomorrow is going to start a whole new life.  

I'm one of the queens of excuse making.

I honestly don't even put much effort into it.

But ultimately, the little 'truth voice' at the back of my head is my biggest critic. probably 90% of "excuse behavior" I have indulged in is something that my truth voice bothers me about until I face the issue, face the "excuse" and then I try to understand why I made the excuse, what is really behind it.

The other 10% of excuse behavior is, I think, ingrained and hasn't yet been tagged by my truth voice. You know... "we should really clean up the spare room" and there are a thousand and one other things I should be doing (1000 of which I don't do also) rather than enforce order in my spare room.

When I was young and we'd make excuses my mom would make us recite the following:

Excuses are tools of incompetence
they build monuments of nothingness
those who specialize in them seldom accomplish anything

(and you guys thought I was overly existential...)

Anyway...I don't make excuses. If I don't want to do something, I say I don't want to do it .I don't HAVE to have a good reason for not wanting to do it. I just don't. And if I truly don't want to do something, I don't. Even in eating, I tend to consciously say "I shouldn't be eating this but I want it so I am eating it."

I don't think this attitude gives me a leg up on anybody. After all I still do the things I do. I'm just pretty honest with myself about why I am doing it.

You have learned the no-point-in-making-bogus-excuses lesson earlier than I did --  you're not even close to "almost 50" and it is a lesson I did not learn until I was over 40!   

Just deciding not to do something because you don't want to (without needing any other reason) provides a certain extra sense of "self" (IMO) and yet it carries with it the very same responsibility as if you HAD made an excuse since the outcome is the same.

Lora

At an O.A. meeting someone once told me that "normal" (non-addict) people think first, act second. Addicts tend to do the reverse: act first, think second. I find that to be true in my case. I often act before I have a chance to think of whether there should be an excuse to act or not to act!
And so that leaves me with two very clear choices: acceptance or denial. Denial didn't get me such great places so I go with acceptance. At least with acceptance I can make contingency plans.

I think one other thing that I picked up along the way, I think from Shari, is the notion of using your screw-ups as learning opportunities. I do genuinely TRY to do that. If I screw up I look at it and say "Ok, what do I know now that I did not know before?" and try to make adjustments.

But most of all I think I've learned not to lay down gauntlets. If I do that my mind automatically goes into rebellion mode. So if I say "I can go work out today or I can not go...it's really up to me," I am more likely to go than if I say "I HAVE to get a workout in today."

I am flipping crazy, I know.

 Your craziness is just one of the things that make us love you!!

Lora