Obstacle or Excuse? — OLD
Stop procrastinating with this powerful coaching question.
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About a year ago, a coaching client of mine kept on insisting on how difficult it was for him to find free time amidst work, chores and kids. His goal was to run twice per week, so he becomes fitter.
But, every single time that I was asking him how the run was, he was replying that he couldn’t go, because of various reasons, which seemed valid — for example:
- “I was tired after work”
- “I had to look after the kids”
- “I had to finish a task from work”
- “I had to…”
- “I had to…”
- “I had to…”
Particularly one time, he replied, “I was hungry and after eating I got heavy, so I couldn’t run”.
Then I asked him “Is being hungry an obstacle or an excuse?”, to which he replied, “What is the difference?”.
“Well”, I told him, “an obstacle is something that prevents you from doing something — if you had a broken leg, for example, that would be an obstacle, you couldn’t run.”
“However, an excuse is something that you tell to yourself to justify why you are not taking the necessary actions”.
After a minute of silence, he timidly said with worry.
“Yeah, you are right. It is an excuse. And I just realised that I find excuses for all sorts of stuff during my day. That is why I keep on procrastinating... But what can I do now?”.
“If it’s an obstacle”, I said, “we could brainstorm together and find ways to overcome it. If on the hand, it’s an excuse, you ultimately have two options.”
“You can forget all about your goal. Perhaps, you don’t really want to do it after all”.
“Or, you can transform your excuse into an obstacle and find ways to overcome it.”
Another minute passed in silence.
The next time my client spoke, it was with enthusiasm, and I could see in his eyes the clarity around his thinking pattern, the pattern that he had just noticed for the first time.
An excuse is something that you tell to yourself to justify why you are not taking the necessary actions.
To finish the story, my client committed to going running immediately after our coaching session, despite the fact that he was drained from his busy day.
And the next morning, guess what. He called me to tell me that he actually did run the previous evening — for 40 minutes!
Sometimes, we need someone else to provoke the story we play inside our head because we are so used to that story that we don’t see it clearly or objectively anymore.
Some other times, we alone can just contemplate the following.
- Think about a task or a goal that you procrastinate on for a long time.
- Remember the reason that prevented you from acting upon it the last time.
- Ask yourself, “is that reason an obstacle or an excuse?”
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn — I’d love to hear from you!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spiros-giannatos/
