Live like you have no excuses - Oct 2008
I heard a workshop leader mention that Olympic athletes live a certain way. He said Olympic athletes live as if they have no excuses. I admire Olympic athletes so my ears were peaked when the facilitator mentioned this.
What if we lived as if we had no excuses? What would happen?
- We wouldn’t blame others when things went off target
- We would hear ourselves complaining and stop the complaint in mid-sentence
- We would live up to the commitments we make to ourselves and others
If you had no excuses over the next hour, day or week what would occur in your performance?
People often call organizations, the culture of complaint. If we in organizations truly lived like we had no excuses the energy draining complaints and blame would stop.
Kegan and Lahey also talk about how to get beyond complaints in their book How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way we Work. They say that when people complain there is an underlying need and resistance to change occurring. If we can address the underlying concern, we can help people get moving and committed to something new.
All of these people allude to the need for us to let go of excuses and stop wasting our energy on behavior that drains instead of builds us up. Why don’t you try it?
