Posted in Articles
Embrace Your Excuses
Just don’t take them at face value…
When you’re trying to make practice a habit, a lot of excuses are going to crop up:
I don’t have the time…
I don’t have the energy…
I have to watch my kids…
I don’t have a good practice space…
We’re used to thinking of excuses as the enemy.
And for good reason: excuses will hold you back, if you believe them.
But the “just do it” method of ignoring your excuses doesn’t work either.
Because excuses are clues.
When your mind supplies an excuse, that’s a clue that you’ve found a friction point.
A friction point is any aspect of your environment or mindset that makes it harder to show up and practice.
Once you know what they are, they can be addressed, often with tiny tweaks.
So act on that information.
When your excuses make you think “I can’t practice because…”, ask yourself “how can I do it anyway?” or even “how can this be easy?”
For example:
If you’re thinking
“I can’t practice because I don’t have a good space at home.”
Turn that around to:
“What can I usefully practice in the space I do have?”
“How can I make the space I have better for practicing?”
If you’re thinking
“I can’t practice because I have to watch the kids.”
Turn that around to:
“Is there some way for the kids to safely occupy themselves, while I practice?”
“How can I get some childcare support, so I can make time for this?”
“Could my kids participate in some way?”
Above all, NEVER rule out any answer
During my days of “feast or famine” practice, my excuse was that I couldn’t practice because I was too tired to practice in the evenings.
The obvious answer was to practice in the mornings, but I ruled that out because I’m not a morning person.
And that was a big mistake.
I’m still not a morning person (SO not a morning person!), but with a lot of experimentation, I found a way to make mornings work for me.
I missed out thousands of hours of practice over the years, all because of that one assumption.
So collect your excuses
Don’t shove them away, collect them like the valuable observations they are.
Then use them to address what’s really getting in your way.
Want more?
Reducing friction is just one of the many things we’ll be doing in How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit.
So come join us!
Registration ends at 10pm Eastern time on Sunday, January 8th, so check it out now: