Breaking through the wall of "EXCUSE"

Man.. have I been enjoying the lazy days of summer! My wedding photography job keeps my weekends pretty busy, but the weekdays are dedicated to my three little munchkins. Well, my kids and also another little job I do for WW and photo shoots I do on the side, oh and also keeping my house cleaned, running errands, paying bills and making sure I put time into my marriage, I can't forget about my friends and this and that.... ahhhh.. LIFE! I am going to just say it right now, I have allowed so many excuses to creep in which has put a bit of a damper on preparing like I should. It's put a damper on my running and working out schedule. I have allowed excuses to be a reason and that is just so lame. In all reality, we are busy people. When my kids were in school, I could run more often and didn't really have to "make time" it was just made for me. I could plan meals and grocery shop at my convenience. Please say I'm not the only one that allows excuses to make decisions for me!! Well, last week I get a text from a friend of mine telling me that there's a VBS at a little church near my house and it's during the day. My kids love going to VBS and since I'm familiar with this church I figured I would send them. I also figured it would be a great week for me to get some time for myself and I could run! So I woke up this morning to the rain and I thought.. man.. if it wasn't raining I could run. Stupid rain. I caught myself.. what am I doing?! I am making another excuse. Here I have some kidless time and I'm yet again making another excuse. Rain never stopped me before. So I put all my running gear on and just ran. It felt so great! I will tell you this, the thing that felt the greatest was the fact that I just did it. I didn't allow an excuse to keep me from running today. It's so easy to fall into that pattern. I have learned to be a goal setter and accomplish them. But even with all that I've learned, I can still fall into a pattern of excuses. What about the times we fall off the wagon and binge for a while on ice cream or potato chips, some of us in those cases will tell ourselves, "Oh well.. I've already messed up, might as well finish off the week and start all over on Monday." We can make up excuses for any behavior we have. How many times have you started something and quit.. just because? At the time it sounded like a good reason why you couldn't follow through. I think most of the time it comes down to the fact that we just lose the excitement to do it. We lose the motivation to see it all the way through. We talk ourselves out of doing something before we even give it a chance. I don't know why we do this. I know I just feel tired sometimes. Feeling tired is ok, it's just when I allow it to become a habitual excuse. How do I keep going? Well sometimes it's easy to keep going, I feel motivated and encouraged and it feels like it's second nature. But sometimes it's hard. In those hard times I try and remind myself what I want. I remind myself how far I've come and that I never want to go back to my old habits. Are you having a problem with breaking through the pattern of excuses? Ask yourself, "What do I really want?" Sometimes I just have to force myself to do something even if I don't feel like it. We don't alway feel like skipping on the cake or going for a walk. Sometimes it's just easier to give in to the excuses. Time will pass and you have to ask yourself what do I want out of life. What do I want to accomplish with my time. No more letting excuses be a reason for you not reaching your goals. In a year from today you'll either be at your goal and setting a new one, closer to your goal or still making excuses as to why you'll start tomorrow. Don't wait. Start now. You might not want too... but that doesn't mean you can't.
Always cheering you on!!! Mel :)