He That Is Good For Making Excuses..
April 6, 2009 by BloggerNewbie
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“Monday Motivation!”
“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
Confession: I “stole” this quote from Happiness is better from one of his “tweets”.
Have you ever noticed that there comes a time in your life when you turn into your parents? You don’t see it coming. In fact, you spend half of your young adult life trying to be completely different, the opposite. Somehow it happens. You don’t even see it coming. You are in a discussion and suddenly the conversation turns to those other people. The “other” generation that is always messing things up. You know the conversation (you’ve heard it before) starts out - “when I was a kid”. Kind of like “the good ole’ days”.
We reap what we sow
For the most part, the current generation is molded and sculpted by the immediate past generation. The generation that is always complaining about the current generation. In other words, we reap what we sow. I remember being told that we had to be careful how we raised our children. Everything we did or said would affect the outcome of this little persons life. I was afraid to speak to my child. What if I said the wrong thing? What if they thought badly of themselves. Their whole life would be ruined!
We couldn’t scold them because we would squash their self esteem. Competition wasn’t really that popular because there was always a winner and a loser and we wanted everyone to be a winner. Yeah, don’t we all? Welcome to reality.
Then there was the “encouragement” talk. When something went wrong or didn’t go their way, it wasn’t their fault. If it was their fault, they would feel bad and have low self esteem so it always had to be someone or something else to blame.
It’s time to be accountable
In any event, regardless of who is responsible for the molding and sculpting, there comes a time in every individuals life that personal responsibility becomes important. Eventually, (hopefully) you will be accountable for your actions or inactions. Most people want to be accountable for their success right? Well the good comes with the bad, it’s that whole equal and opposite action and reaction theory thing going on. You can’t have one without the other. Either you are or you aren’t.
Some people spend more time and energy figuring out who or what to blame when things go wrong then time or energy figuring out how to correct or change something. For the most part, what difference does it make? Yeah, you need to evaluate what went wrong, take note and change direction. The important part here is to “change” not complain. I have always thought that if people spent as much time and energy on fixing or changing things as they did on making excuses they wouldn’t have time to notice the “poor me” attitude. Please, just do something.
It just drives me crazy when people spend good time on nonsense. At the end of the day, is it really important who, what, when or why? Or is it really important that something was accomplished or successful or you even moved forward!
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Well, I’m sure Benjamin Franklin doesn’t mind if one of his quotes is stolen again.
Thanks for including me in the post!
-Dustin
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Dee,
I’ve had to try and instill this into an out of control 15 year old stepdaughter who blames her mom for “how she turned out.”
I tell her that regardless of what is true, blaming accomplishes nothing.
Of course because she is 15 and knows everything, I’m an idiot.
She’ll get it figured out one day, I guess
George
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For the longest time my younger sister would sulk and blame issues on our parents. After a while I just had to tell here if you are old enough to place blame then you are old enough to take ownership and make a change.
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I think I fall into the category of blaming myself for e v e r y t h i n g no matter who did what. This is a lifelong habit that I really have to work at breaking.
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Hey Dee, it’s much easier to complain though than to fix what’s wrong. I can’t stand too much complaining. I can take a little, I do it myself, but don’t get chronic on me. I start to avoid the complainer.
I think the poor-me’s of the world just need a hug. It’s easy to be the victim and boo hoo rather than be responsible for our actions.
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Dustin:
You and Ben Franklin are so welcome!
George:
From my experience, 15 yr olds replace their hearing with ultimate wisdom. They know everything and hear nothing, they don’t need to listen, they know it all. I don’t envy you. The only thing that keeps you going is that hopefully someday they will also have teenage children and they will act just like them. Another hope is that they do out grow it. You would think it is “a given” but I can tell you stories about a number of adults who still make excuses for everything!
Debo:
I have always wanted to be present when people experience their epiphany and realize it is really up to them!
Carla:
Ditto! I think blaming yourself for e v e r y t h i n g that occurs in world is also related to not thinking you are important enough. At least that is the case for me.
Val:
I so agree! Totally. I am the same way. I have to actually talk myself into dealing with the chronic complainers, set aside time, a time limit, I know then I have to save myself and escape.
Who has time to sit around and figure out who or what to blame, just fix it.