Mistaking reasons for excuses.
I remember, I would often start giving excuses or explain why I failed at getting a girl. And every time I ever mentioned the word “can’t,” he would quickly interrupt and say, “can, but choose not to,” and then would let me continue. This happened in every conversation we had, from professional life, to women, to traveling, to personal finance, to whatever.
After a couple days it got really annoying, annoying to the point that I was consciously avoiding saying the word “can’t” in front of him. I finally asked him, “Why do you keep interrupting me with that?” He said, “Language is important. It affects how you think. Remove ‘can’t’ from your vocabulary. You can do anything, it’s a matter of choice and will.”
Before long, the phrase was embedded in my head, and I’ve used it on myself and with others quite a bit since.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Since I started meditating, I’ve made more of an effort to just ‘do’ things. Instead of spending time worrying and feeling overwhelmed by an issue I’ve started just doing something about it. Frequently I am surprised that it isn’t as bad as a I thought it would be, that I can actually get things done a whole lot quicker then I realised possible. Luckily, this decision to spend more time just getting on seems to be happening unconsciously too.
And now I can’t help but think lots of the ‘reasons’ I gave, give for not being able to do things just sound like excuses. I’m not there entirely, of course but it’s a step in the right direction and I’ll take that.
June 15, 2011