'Excuses are the foundation for failure and stagnation'
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
Let me start with something honest, and gentle. An excuse always feels reasonable. That’s the whole trick of it. It lets us off the hook, it shields us from the risk of trying and falling short, and it hands the blame to something outside ourselves. In the moment, an excuse feels like protection.
And that’s exactly why it’s so dangerous. Comfort, repeated often enough, hardens into a foundation. And when you build a life on excuses, you build one that cannot move. That’s something stagnation is. Not laziness, not weakness, just a life quietly cemented in place, one reasonable-sounding excuse at a time.
I Know This Ground Well
I’m not writing this from some clean distance. For at least 16 years, my own life felt like the movie Groundhog Day, the same crappy year on repeat, circling the same ruts, convinced nothing would ever change. I was stuck deep in ‘The Tip,’ the cluttered, noisy dumping ground of the mind, and I had a reason for all of it.
There was a stretch where I hit rock bottom, taking petrol out of the lawn mower just so I could get to work, avoiding the bank balance on my phone, drowning in shame and pulling away from the people I loved. And I had my stories for every bit of it. The reasons felt completely true at the time. They were also the very thing keeping me exactly where I was.
The Story That Keeps Us Stuck
That’s what an excuse really is: a story. “I can’t because…” “It’s their fault.” “That’s just how I am.” “Now isn’t the right time.” Each one has a grain of your truth in it, which is what makes it so convincing. And each one quietly does the same job. It keeps the reason for our stuckness outside of us, somewhere we can’t touch it, which means there’s nothing we can do. That’s the hidden comfort of an excuse. If it’s not up to me, then I don’t have to face the risk of changing it.
Fear: The Excuse That Feels Like Caution
Most excuses are really fear wearing a more respectable coat. In my book I describe a place I call the ‘Fear Forest’ dense woods where the shadows loom large and danger seems to be everywhere. In there we fall into constant vigilance and avoidance, gripped by a fear of change and of the unknown. And in my own words from the book, here is what it costs us: resistance of growth and missed opportunities.
Fear almost never announces itself as fear. It shows up sounding sensible. “Now isn’t the right time.” “I’ll wait until I’m ready.” “Best not to risk it.” Every one of those is ‘The Fear Forest’ talking, and every one of them keeps us safely, quietly, miserably right where we already are. Almost always, the growth we’re longing for lives on the far side of the very thing we’re avoiding.
Perfectionism: The Most Respectable Excuse of All
Then there’s perfectionism, and this one is sneaky, because it doesn’t look like an excuse at all. It looks like high standards. It looks like caring deeply. As I write in the book, the fear of judgment is often intensified by perfectionism, the desire to present a flawless image, which leaves us hesitant to share our authentic selves in case we don’t quite measure up.
The dream never starts. the book stays in the drawer, the idea stays locked in your head, the real you stays hidden, all of it under the perfectly reasonable banner of “it’s not ready yet.” Perfectionism whispers that you’ll act the moment it’s flawless, and since nothing is ever truly flawless, that promise is really permission to never begin at all. As I say in the book, the fear of failure can stop us even attempting the thing in the first place.
There’s a line I love from Amy Bloom: ‘You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.’ You don’t have to be flawless to begin. You only have to begin.
The Victim Triangle
In the book I write about the Victim, or Drama, Triangle, and I’ll be honest with you all, I lived inside it for years without even knowing it. I didn’t want the label ‘victim,’ it sounded far too harsh, until it was gently pointed out to me. I hated the drama and it turned out, I was quietly brilliant at creating it. One corner of that triangle is the persecutor: the part of us that blames others, or turns and blames ourselves, rather than taking responsibility for our own part. Excuses are the fuel that keeps the whole triangle spinning. As Alice Walker put it, the most common way people give up their power is by believing they don’t have any.
Responsibility Is Not Blame
Now here is the part I most want you to hear, because it’s where the compassion lives. Taking responsibility is not the same as beating yourself up. Self-blame is just the persecutor turned inward and another excuse in disguise, the one that keeps you stuck in shame instead of stuck in blame. That’s not what I’m talking about.
When I finally took ownership of my life, it didn’t come through shame. It came through compassion. And what I found on the other side was the most empowering thing I’ve ever felt: the realisation that I hold the power within myself to create the life I want.
From ‘The Tip’ to ‘The Garden’
The day I stopped feeding the excuses and started becoming the observer of my own thoughts was the day I stepped out of ‘The Tip’ and into ‘The Garden.’ That place of light, clear space and fresh air inside the mind. It wasn’t one giant leap. It was one honest step, then another. Every excuse you set down is one rut you climb out of. Every bit of ownership you take is another patch of ‘The Garden’ reclaimed.
A Question to Sit With
This week, with no shame attached, gently ask yourself:
‘What’s one excuse I’ve been leaning on, and what would it look like to take my power back from it?’
You don’t have to dismantle every story you’ve ever told yourself today. Just one. Pick it up, look at it honestly, and set it down. That single act is how the ground under a stuck life finally starts to shift.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? — Navigating the Paths Between Chaos and Clarity → Get the book