Excuses: The Tools of Incompetent Fools

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Welcome everybody to another episode of the Motor Register See podcast, the show that gives you a hundred percent fluff free, guaranteed practical and useful tips with every single episode so you can live up to your true new potential. No spam, no long intros or information to get you going. If you're new to the show, welcome and I know you're going to get a ton of value from this episode. And if you're returning listener hey, welcome back. Welcome back.

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Click save it to all who are listening, whether new or returning, please, if at any point in time you get some value from this episode, I ask that you share it with somebody and rate this is show what you think that it's worth. So with all that out the way, let's get this episode started. And this week we are talking about excuses. Now, I'm not sure what I'm going to name this episode quite yet, as I usually don't when I'm making these. And I usually think of an episode title after the fact.

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But right now the placeholder is going to be excuses or Tools of Incompetent Fools because that is a saying that I had an old high school teacher. She was never my teacher, but I did interact with her on an occasional basis and that is one of the models that she had. When someone would forget to turn in their homework, she would always say, oh, excuses are tools of the incompetent fools. And that was funny at the time, a little bit harsh, but I could see what she was getting at the time. I didn't.

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And like I said, I went to high school, finished college, and now that I'm older, I kind of understand now what she meant by excuses or tools of incompetent fools. Now, this is going to be a long episode, so we're going to have eight. Yeah, let me try not to take my mic like I usually do in episodes. Eight. Can you see that?

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Eight. There we go. Eight different ways you can stop making excuses. But before we do, let's get a quick introduction as to what I'm saying here. So show of hands, who has never made an excuse I should see?

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None of you all hands up. Okay? All you all done made some excuse in your life. Whether you call it a lie, a little white lie, I don't care. Everybody's made excuse.

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Everybody's told some kind of fib of some sort on some level. That's why my hands aren't even up either. Because we've all made excuses. We've all made lies. Here's a good example here.

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It's New Year's Day and you say you're going to go work out. You've been working out for about a week and then the second Monday of the new year comes around and that hits and you don't want to go work out. And you say, oh, I'm too tired. Oh, yes, well, that's an excuse, easy as that. That's an excuse.

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So we've all made excuses, okay? Whether because we aren't ready or we're just plain old lazy, we'll all make excuses to get out of doing anything. So why is it that we make excuses? I'm not going to get into a bunch of reasons why. Because there's so many reasons why I make excuses.

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We would be here for hours and days with me trying to explain why we make excuses. So instead of coming up with and telling you why people make excuses, now, we're going to go through, as I said before, eight ways to stop making these excuses. So that way, this is an umbrella thing here, okay? So no matter what your reasoning is for making an excuse, we got eight ways. Chances are at least one of these is going to resonate with you today, okay?

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So we're going to go through these kind of quick again, because there are eight of them, and I don't want this episode to be like 40 minutes long. So number one is to come to terms that you are making excuses, and these excuses are hindering you from moving forward and getting what you want. Ask yourself, why are you making these excuses? Is it because you're fearful of something or someone? Is it because you don't want to change?

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Is it because I lack the resources required to do XYZ, whatever it is? Truthfully, truthfully, truthfully. Say to yourself and ask yourself, what is it that is the core reason behind why I am making excuses. You cannot make any positive progress until you come to terms with why you are making the said excuses that you are. Number two, that is to realize that excuses always sound the best to the person who is making them.

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Say that one more time. Excuses always sound best to the person that is making them, okay? Why is that great with the example that I gave before with you or I or this hypothetical straw man person not wanting to get up in the morning on the second Monday of the new year to go work out because they're too tired? How many people do you know, myself included, now? So if you say you don't know someone now, you do.

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Who wake up on a Monday morning and be like, man, I do not want to go to work today. I really don't want to go to work today. I'm so sick and tired of going to work. I didn't get much sleep last night, but I'm so tired. But you still get up and go to work, don't you?

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Even if you're an entrepreneur and you have your own business and anything, some days you still don't want to get up and go to work. Okay? Okay. Do you think I want to film podcast episodes all the time? That doesn't mean I hate doing the podcast.

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Don't get me wrong, I love doing this podcast, but some days I'm feeling like, all right, I get to record episodes today and some days just like, oh, I got to record some episodes today because I'm going to fall behind schedule. Do you think I'm happy? Yippee. Skippy. Every single day.

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There are some parts of running this podcast I do not like to do, but yeah, I still do it. I don't make excuses for it. I just do it because it's got to be done. And that's what I'm getting at here, right? If I were to make the excuse that I don't want to go run my accounting software for the podcast or anything because I just don't feel like it, it's not going to get done.

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I don't have someone else right now that I can go give them the thing and say, hey, run the books for me and go see our accounts payable and receivable. I can't do that.

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If I don't get it done right now, it's not going to get done. So the excuse always sound best to me because I don't feel like it right now. I looked at them last week, okay, we didn't look at them this week. Last week is not the same as this week. They look different.

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Guarantee you, even if it looks the same, double check, make sure excuses sound best of the person who's making them. Number three, ask yourself, why are you settling here? Yes, excuses cause you to settle. And we're going to go right back to the fitness example again. You're making the excuse that you cannot go in on Monday morning to go get that workout in because you're too tired.

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So you're settling at your current fitness level instead of getting to where you wanted to go. Now, this is not to say, oh, you're saying I can't take a break. No one said you can't take a break. What I'm saying is, if you had a goal to be able to do, let's say 20 push ups in a row, and you're stopping with your fitness goal at five right now because you're tired, you didn't reach your goal at 20, you shortcut your goal. You plain old didn't make your goal.

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That's all it is. There's no sugar coating of, oh, I didn't feel like it. I'll get to it later. I don't care. You didn't reach your goal of 20.

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Why you're selling at five? You would have done 20. But I could have done 20. But I should have gotten to 20. But that is the trifecta of excuses right there.

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You are going to do something great with your life. You were going to accomplish something fantastic, but something told you, now, I'm not going to do that today. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it was. And frankly, I don't really care what it was.

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And you shouldn't either, because if you wanted to do something great and accomplish something great, why are you selling for that? I would have done this, but I could have done this, but I should have done this. But you were put here to do fantastic, amazing things with your godgiven gifts. Why are you settling for less than that? Because I'm tired.

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I'm hungry. I want more sleep. I still got two more other things to do today. You are still given a gift to be able to do stuff. Why are you throwing it away?

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You can public speak well, you can English good. Why are you throwing it away by not doing anything with it? You were given the gift of a fantastic physique. Why are you going to throw it away and not teach other people how to do what you did to get there?

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You have all these abilities within you. Every single person listening to me, even if you're not listening to me, every single person in the world has an ability. They have a gift. They have something that they're just plain old good at. You're good at art, you're good at artistic abilities.

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Drawing, designing. Every single building that you see requires some kind of an architect or some kind of a designer. Why would you say, I'm too tired to draw a building that could have been the next amazing building or another amazing sculpture that could have been created? But because you said, I don't feel like it today, it went away. You didn't use it.

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You basically threw away your skill for that time. That could have been you. It could have been you.

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So anyway, let me not harp on that point so much, because that's a big rant point of mine, is settling, right? I do not like the word settling at all. People say, I'll just do this. I'm fine here, I'm settled down. I don't like when people say the word settle down because it has the connotation of you could have done better, but you chose to do less because of comfort.

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That's why I don't like the word settle, because to me, it has a connotation of I could have done more, but I am choosing not to. That's what it sounds like. That's why a lot of people say they settle. That's a big rant point of mine. I've stayed on this point too long, and I said, we got eight to go through and we're going on to number four now.

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So number four is to quit comparing yourself. I think we made an episode a couple of weeks back where we talked about not seeking external validation, and in that one, we were talking about to not compare yourself to other people. So for the love of all things holy, why are you comparing yourself to somebody else? This is another rant point of mine. Why did I do this to myself?

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I put two rant points back to back. So I'm going to try not to rant on this one, though. This one's for a whole another episode of ranting. Now, there's nothing wrong with a role model or a mentor or anyone like that, right? You look up to somebody, you see their good attributes.

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Their good traits are good quality, and you're like, I want to be like that guy. I want to be like him. I want to be like her. Whatever it is, that is cool, and that's perfectly fine. We should all have some kind of mentor that we look up to, we talk to, we listen to.

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Whatever it is. We should always have somebody that we see. They have good character traits. I want to kind of be like that, right? Leading by example.

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That's fine. But the problem is when you become more enveloped with everything that they're doing, and then get into more of a keeping up with the Joneses mentality. Now you want to do everything. You want to be everything like them. You want to have the exact same car, the exact same clothes, the exact same lawn, the exact same house, the exact same boat, the exact same jet ski.

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Why?

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Look, I think it was last week, I already talked about the importance of staying in your own lane. Why are you going into their lane? Explain that to me. Why? Why make that make sense to me?

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Why is it that you were made completely different than this other person, and yet you find it in yourself to try to fit the mold of them? This is why people say, I'm going to be the next MJ. Sure. Why not? Say what you want?

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You're free to say whatever you want. Even if it doesn't make sense, you can still say what you want. Some people can be the next MJ. You can't be you can be the first you. You could be compared to MJ, but you're not going to be the next one, because only MJ can be MJ.

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Okay? You're not going to make as many shots as him. Because if you want to get real technical with things, it's impossible to be the next him. Because you have to have the exact same upbringing, the exact same training regimen, the exact same metabolism, the exact same tendon, length and capabilities, and stretching capabilities, the exact same muscle mass, the exact same muscle attachments as he does. And it's physically impossible.

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I've already talked about an episode way back. The chance of you being born is already income infanticly small. For you to be born exactly the same way that you are, right? There's so many different options that could have been chosen for you to be you. It is literally impossible for you to be exactly like MJ in every single way, shape, and form.

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It's absolutely no way. So instead of saying, I want to be the next MJ, you can say, I want to shoot buckets. I want to make buckets like MJ. I want to be able to have the speed and the reaction time of MJ that you can train, that you can get close but say, I want to be the next MJ and just encompass everything is literally impossible. And again, see, I still went off on a rant, and I was trying not to anyway, number five, stop blaming others.

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Repeat after me, guys, and you are not going to probably hate me for saying this, but it's true. Okay, repeat after me. My life is 100% my responsibility.

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Put that on a poster. Put that on a shirt. Tshirt. Whatever you want. Put it paint it on your wall.

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I don't care. Make it a wallpaper. Whatever you do, give a mental sticker. I don't care what you do. But you have to understand and solidify within yourself the fact that your life is 100% your responsibility.

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It just is. No, Susie did not make you lash out. No, someone did not. Oh, we talked about my mama, so I had to hit them. No, you didn't.

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You have complete control over your emotions at that time. You chose to let that person say, oh, well, this is true, unfortunately, your mom. And then you got upset. Why are you going to let that person have that much control over you? You know what you just did when you did that?

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When someone just said, oh, your mom is this, or, oh, your mom is that, you got upset, you subconsciously and even consciously told that individual, oh, if you want to get a reaction and make them look dumb, talk about their mom. Why is it that you think that when people go and do these things, and then the person that got the reaction out of them says the same stuff, and you get another reaction, they have control over you. They know how to manipulate you. How do you think comedians do it? They do it in a harmless sense, right?

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They're just reading the crowd. They say things that's getting the crowd the most amped up and hyped up, and then they run with it. They dig that thing till they can't be dogged anymore. And that's what makes them good comedians, because they know how to impromptu things. They know how to think on their feet, find what gets the crowd really going, and then sticking with that.

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That's what makes them good. Now, of course, on the flip side, like I just said before, if someone says something to you and gets a negative reaction out of you, and they keep on doing it over and over and over again, and then they keep getting a reaction out of you, it's cyclical. If they want to make you look like an idiot, they're going to keep making you look like an idiot. So your life is 100% your responsibility. Quit blaming others for the actions that you take, because honestly, if you're really thinking about it, someone can say, I hate you to you, for example, and you might or might not have a reaction.

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You might say, oh, I'm going to tell them off and then come back up to my level. No, that's not what you do. You stay at your level. And like I said in past episodes before, just like the Iron Man suit, have those bullish just bounce off. Someone says, I hate you.

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PEWD. That's a bullet right at you. Let it bounce off. You didn't even hear. You didn't even care.

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Even though that's why my sister is great, right? We mess with each other all the time. But that's why she is really good at what she does, right? To an extent, if you're telling her stuff and she does not care about your opinion at that point, for example, she's drawing. She's a really great artist.

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In fact, shout out to her. She's the one who actually made the art for this show, which is the art that you're seeing, right? So if you talk to her and you're telling her her art sucks, she will pay you no peace of mind whatsoever, right? Someone else now you tell them their art sucks, and now they're up at our how dare you say my art sucks. I've been doing this for 20 years.

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It was the same words, but because two different reactions. You see what I mean? Life was 100% your responsibility, and how you interact is part of that responsibility. You can either just ignore them and say they're just a hater, or you can react like the straw man guy and just get up in arms and let them have a piece of your mind. Choice is yours.

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All right, let's go through these three real fast. We're coming up on a longer episode here. So number six is to set small, attainable goals, right? In the book Limitless, which I bring up so often. I know because it's really good, limitless by Jim Quick, he spoke about setting goals in the form of small, simple steps.

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And an example of that is going to the gym. It might be harder to go to the gym out of the blue, but it makes it easier if you just have to put on your gym shoes, right? Instead of just saying, I have to go to the gym, and then you have to put on your shoes and clean up yourself and get dressed and drive over there, just start with just saying, okay. Instead of saying, I'm going to go to the gym, just say, okay, I'm going to put on my gym shoes. That's it.

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Okay, cool. Then just say, okay, I'm going to put on my shirt. Okay? Just say, I'm going to start my car. I'm going to pack my gym bag.

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Just small little things. Well, let's say you want to make a million dollars as another example, because who doesn't want to make I know I want to make a million dollars. I want to see multiple commas in my bank account. I know that for sure. That would be really nice, especially at the time of this episode.

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I actually just saw that somebody in my state actually just won out over $1 billion lottery. So congratulations to them. I know that would be real nice. I mean, who doesn't want to see over 1 billion with a b dollar in their bank account? That would be really nice.

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But instead of saying, I want to make a billion dollars, started by saying, let's try to make one dollars. That's a small, simple step. Then $5, then $10, then $20, then $50, right? Make the goals small. Something that you can actually get to.

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Something that's incremental, that you can stick to long term to prevent excuse generation. And then slowly amp up that goal over time. And over time, eventually you're going to get to the point where it's like, wow, now the days when you said one dollars to $5 now looking like, okay, now I want to start making 100,000 to 500,000. If you watch YouTubers glow up in their business stage, you'll see people started saying, oh God, I made my first ten k month. And now once they do that, they're making ten k months.

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Like it's nothing. Now they're just like, okay, next goal is one hundred k a. Now they're making 100K months, right? Those are the small, simple steps. Okay?

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Number seven is to realize that mistakes are learning opportunities. Now I get it. I get it. We're not all perfect. We all make mistakes.

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It's a part of life. Some people are crippled by the fear of making a mistake. And let me tell you, if no one's told us before, let me be the first to tell you it's okay to make a mistake. It's completely fine. Okay?

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Even smart technology itself makes mistakes because it was created by drumroll. Please people. And guess what? People make mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable.

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And realize that more often than not, your mistake is probably not going to kill you. Okay? So treat it like a learning experience and know what not to do next time. Finally, strengthen your weaknesses. This one I'm not going to spend too much time on as it's pretty self explanatory.

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However, no one said go out and become the best at everything, because that's physically impossible. You simply cannot do that. Life is too short and there's too many things that we can do in this life. However, let's say you have a weakness in finance, whatever that finance issue may be. Let's say a spending problem, for example.

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You can go out and ask a friend or family member to help you track your spending. So you have some buffer when you want to just go swipe crazy. Or let's just say you set aside a specific percent. Like for me, I set aside I think it was 5% of my paycheck, every single paycheck that I get from my day job. And I put it on a special checking account.

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And that is the money that I can spend freely willy nilly. I want to go out to eat with friends, that's where it's coming off. If I want to buy something off Amazon, that's where it's coming off of. I want to buy a cool modification from my car, visual modification or whatever. It's going to be coming off of that card.

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I want to buy a new gaming PC. It's going to be coming off of that card. Do something like that and that way you can help control your spending. That's just an example of what I do. For example, just so I can help myself to budget with things.

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This doesn't mean eventually you'll never have spending issues again, right? Because when left to your own devices, naturally you're going to want to fall back into old habits. But rather, you have methods in place to help prevent you from falling back into those old habits. So real fast, let's run back through these eight ways to stop making excuses. And then we'll call this episode adjourned.

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Number one is to come to terms that you are making excuses. Excuses are hindering you from moving forward and getting what you want. Number two, realize that excuses are only sounding the best to those who make them. Number three, ask yourself, why are you settling? Because, yes, excuses cause you to settle.

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Number four, quit comparing yourself. Because comparing yourself is no bueno bueno. Number five, stop blaming others because life is 100% your responsibility. Number six is to set small attainable goals. Number seven is to realize that mistakes are learning opportunities.

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And number eight is to strengthen your weaknesses. And with that guy, I'm going to bring this week's episode to a close. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I know it was a longer episode, but thank you so much for tuning in. And before you go, as usual, some quick requests of you if you are feeling so obliged.

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Number one, like follow or subscribe to show whatever platform I'm listening on. So that way you can be notified whenever I post a new episode. Number two, let me know what you thought about this episode by leaving a comment. It could be as simple as great episodes, keep up the good work. Or I hated this episode, kill yourself or something like that.

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I don't care. Leave an episode. Let me know what you thought about it. Send me a DM, whatever you want to do. Lastly, follow me on social media.

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All the links to that will be in the show notes or the episode description. Take care of yourselves and I'll see you all in the next episode.