When I coach business clients and meet participants at my workshops, regardless of ages, titles, and experience — the biggest excuse that keeps popping up over and over:
“It’s hard for me to _____________.”
Have you ever heard yourself say something along these lines about your lifestyle or business? Fill in the blank. Just add your own, personal “thing” that you find hard to do. What’s your biggest excuse?
I regularly hear people say they find it difficult to:
- Get up early
- Write blog content
- Post on social media
- Respond to all of their messages
- Increase their fees
- Ask for the sale
- Learn about Facebook ads
- Understand their numbers
- Save money
- Ask for a referral or testimonial
The list goes on and on… Have you identified your “hard” thing?
It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a successful company or just starting your own business, you’ll always find something that’s hard. I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t have at least one difficult, frustrating, or demotivating thing they can’t help but vent about.
Before we go any further down this rabbit trail, I want to stop here and clarify one important, brutal fact:
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
Do you know what’s actually hard?
STARTING!
You can walk in circles, pretend the hard things don’t exist and pray that someone will do it for you– but, again, nothing is being done to propel you forward.
You can talk a big game, but when you don't do anything about your roadblocks, you aren't moving any needles forward. Click To TweetBy choosing to reiterate your excuses that it’s just “too hard,” you delay and stall until you’re drowning in the looming dread of failure and your feelings slowly begin to swallow you whole …
Doesn’t sound like a thriving life or business, does it?
I wish I could take you by the shoulders, look you in the eyes and tell you just to start. Any kind of tangible action is better than none.
The hardest part is starting. The biggest hurdle in this whole process is finding the self-discipline to do what you need to do and then sticking with it.
You’ve started and stopped? Start again. Keep starting and going until you finally cross it off with utmost satisfaction.
It’s not going to happen overnight.
Letting Go of the Biggest Excuse
Running a business and doing all the things above isn’t really what’s hard. What’s actually hard is choosing to decide to make them a priority so that you can change your habits. It requires you to make practical adjustments to your lifestyle, time, and relationships too.
When you start to tackle your “hard thing,” it’s sticking with it the first, second, and third time that is a real challenge. We don’t like change, plain and simple. Change doesn’t come naturally to us, feel fun or extremely productive the first couple of times.
But once you’ve developed the habit to keep showing up and working through it, it gets easier. It starts to become easier to let go of your biggest excuse.
I can promise you this: if you stick with it, you’ll start to feel good about your decision to change and begin to see results.
I challenge you to identify what your “hard thing” is and release it. Don’t hold onto it; don’t vent about it, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Face it head-on, and do something about it: comment below and tell me what your excuse is.
Identifying your excuses and “hard things” is an important step, but you need to move to the next one: starting.
Most people are more-married to their excuse than they are the future they want to create. Click To TweetIf it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to stick with your goals and create the life you want. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse, and it will likely start with: “it’s just hard for me.”
The only question that’s left to answer is: which one are you married to?
PS – My hard thing is exercise, in case you thought for a second I didn’t have one. 🙂
