Do you have Excusitis?

Excusitis is the disease of the failures. Unsuccessful or confused people use excuses for:

Why they haven’t Why they don’t Why they can’t Why they aren’t

Exusitis is the difference between people who are going places and striding forward, and unsuccessful or stuck people who suffer from this mind-deadening disease, according to David J Schwartz, Phd, in his classic book The Magic of Thinking Big first published in 1959. It’s as true today as it was then.

“You will find that the more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses. But the fellow who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywherealways has a bookful of reasons to explain why,” says Schwarz.

Every failure has this disease in its advanced form, and most ‘average’ persons have at least a mild case of it. I am pretty sure that most of us get the odd ‘infection’ of Excusitis from time to time.

Schwarz says that Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are:

Health Excusitis Intelligence Excusitis Age Excusitis

Luck Excusitis

A victim of this thought disease goes through the following mental process:

I’m not doing as well as I should

What can I use as an alibi that will help me save face?

Poor health

Lack of education Too old

Too young Bad luck

Personal misfortune

Wife/husband/partner How I was brought up

Like any disease, Excusitis gets worse if it isn’t treated properly. 

The more the victim believes the excuse/alibi, the more convinced he/she becomes that it is really true.

Now that you are aware of this common trap, Schwarz says you must vaccinate yourself against Excusitis. Awareness is half the battle won.

Your exercise today:

Go through the checklist above and see if you are using any of these excuses. If you are, then you may just be suffering from Excusitis.

Write them down for greater awareness and what action/outcome you use them as an excuse for

Ask yourself these two questions about each: Are they actually valid?

What can you do about them?

Wear an elastic band on your wrist. Every time you find yourself making an excuse, pull the elastic band to sting yourself into awareness!

If you want to play a bigger game, stop making excuses.

Human Potential Expert