"Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses" (George Washington Carver). You are never a failure until you begin to blame somebody else. Stop blaming others. You'll find that when you become good at making excuses, you won't be good at anything else. Excuses are the tools a person with no purpose or vision uses to build great monuments of emptiness.

You can learn from your mistakes if you don't waste your time denying and defending them. "It seems to me these days that people who admit they're wrong get a lot further than people who prove they're right" (Deryl Pfizer). What poison is to food, alibis are to a productive life. "Work brings profit; talk brings poverty" (Proverbs). "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to do when all they really need is one reason why they can" (Willis Whitney).

One of the biggest alibis is regret. Don't leave any regrets on the field - give your all in the game of life. "The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing" (Somerset Maugham). Eliminate all your regrets. "Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it. It's only good for wallowing in" (Catherine Mansfield). The truth is, a thousand regrets do not pay one debt. Live your life so that your tombstone reads, "No regrets."

When a winner makes a mistake, he says, "I was wrong." When a loser makes a mistake, he says, "It wasn't my fault." Do you admit and say, "I was wrong," or do you say, "It wasn't my fault?" A winner explains; a loser explains away.

Idle people lack no excuses. The word can't usually means you won't try. The word can't weakens our resolve and many times does more harm than slander or lies. Can't is the worst excuse and the foremost enemy of success.

We have many reasons for failure but not a real excuse. The book of Philippians says it best: "In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you." Alibis and excuses should be cremated, not embalmed. The person who excuses himself always accuses himself. Denying a fault doubles it.

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You don't blame them on your mother, the ecology or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny" (Albert Ellis). Don't buy that alibi. We should live our lives like Florence Nightingale when she said, "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took and excuse."

Source: Know Your Limits - Then Ignore Them by John Mason.
Excerpt permission granted by Insight Publishing Group