I want you to try something tomorrow. Just for one day. Twenty-four hours.
Make no excuses.
None. Zero. Not one.
No excuses to your spouse. No excuses to your boss. No excuses to your kids. No excuses to yourself. Especially not to yourself.
Sounds simple, right? It’s not. It’s not easy for me, and it’s not easy for anyone. And here’s why: you don’t even know how many excuses you make. Nobody does. They’re so baked into how we talk, how we think, how we move through the day that most of them don’t even register anymore. They’re invisible and automatic. Like breathing, except every excuse is quietly making your life a little smaller.
Your Morning Is Already Full of Them
The alarm goes off. You hit snooze. That’s not an excuse yet. But the thing you tell yourself while you do it? That is.
“I stayed up late. My body needs the rest.”
“Ten more minutes won’t matter.”
“I’ll skip breakfast and make up the time.”
You haven’t been awake for thirty seconds, and you’ve already negotiated with yourself three times. You’ve already explained away the plan you set the night before. The version of you who set that alarm had intentions, while the version of you who’s lying there has excuses.
Now you’re running late. Which means the workout doesn’t happen. “I’ll go to the gym tonight,” you tell yourself. But you know you won’t. Saying it just buys you permission to let it go right now without feeling the weight of it. You’ll figure out the excuse later to get out of it tonight.
You get to work, and someone asks about the thing you said you’d finish. “I got pulled into something else.” That’s an excuse dressed as a status update. What actually happened is you didn’t prioritize it. But “I didn’t prioritize it” feels like an admission. “I got pulled into something” feels like a circumstance. One is honest, and the other is comfortable.
By 10 a.m., most people have made a half dozen excuses without catching a single one.
The Ones You Don’t Even Hear
The obvious excuses are easy to spot. The ones that get you are the quiet ones. The internal ones.
“I’m just not a morning person.” That’s not a fact. It’s a preference you’ve promoted to an identity, so you never have to challenge it. “I’ve always been bad at confrontation.” “That’s just how I am.”
These excuses disguise choices as characteristics. And once something becomes “who you are,” you never have to do the work of changing it.
The Challenge
One day. Catch every excuse before it leaves your mouth. Count them. Replace each one with ownership. “I didn’t have time” becomes “I didn’t make time.” “I forgot” becomes “It wasn’t a priority, and it should have been.”
You’ll be uncomfortable. That’s the point. You’ll be shocked at the volume. And your relationships will respond, because when you stop handing people excuses, they notice.
One day. No excuses. Not even the small ones. Especially the small ones. You’ll learn more about yourself in twenty-four hours than most people learn in years.
