“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”

~ Florence Nightingale

We do absolutely nothing out of fear. We self-sabotage out of fear—fear of the past and fear of the unknown.

We make excuses for not trying, not pushing harder, not loving more and deeper, not getting over the past. An excerpt in a journal I have says that our excuses focus us on the past. We can’t move forward or even operate in a healthy space in our present, because our minds are trapped in the past.

You won’t know if something is impossible until you try every possible angle and opportunity to prove that it is possible.

You won’t know if you can’t do something until you exhaust every attempt at trying to do it.

It’s easy to say “can’t” and “impossible” when you barely skim the surface of “try”.

You can’t live and thrive in fear. Yeah I said it, you can’t live and thrive in fear. It’s not possible to constantly be looking backwards, paralyzed from moving forward, too turned around to do anything of substance in your present, if you’re constantly in a state of fear. It kills you from the inside out. It eats away at you little by little until it completely devours you and nothing is left but a shell or worse, a layer of “dust”.

I learned in Sunday school when I was a little girl that fear is:

False Evidence Appearing Real.

It appears to be real. It appears to be so. But it isn’t and the so-called evidence isn’t truth, it’s a lie that you keep buying into until it becomes your reality. It’s like sitting in a room or closet in the dark and the more you stare at something or in a certain direction the more your mind begins to design images and you begin to believe that you see something. When the lights are turned on what you thought you saw is no longer there. It didn’t mystically magically disappear. It was never there. That is how fear manifests in our every day lives. A seed is planted and we nurture it until it is fully rooted and blossomed as a reality in our lives. It is only when someone turns on the “light” that we uproot what was planted.

When I would tell my dad that I couldn’t do something it would infuriate him. He would say “I would rather you say you don’t want to do something than tell me you can’t do it…” because in dad’s mind (and what I’ve grown to learn) saying and believing “can’t” means you have given up, you have made an excuse, and you don’t know what you don’t know because you won’t actually try your best repeatedly to do it.

All of the great ideas that we now marvel were only manifested and made possible because the curators and designers of those ideas never ever ever stopped working to make those ideas a reality.

From the arts to business, the first computer to the Internet, infrastructure to space travel—-ideas that many said were “impossible” but a few kept pushing and trying anyway, and now “can’t” and “impossible” are the past and what we experience and take for granted now is our present. No excuses for the failures along the way. Those visionaries just kept pressing forward, exhausting all of the possibilities until their ideas were tangible.

That is what we need to focus on each day, each moment of every single day—

What action can you take today to fix or improve upon what didn’t work in the past?

What action can you take today that will lead to the breakthrough of the future?

Action breaks up monotony. Action keeps the mind going and sharp. Action keeps ideas flowing. Action helps you to see things from different angles and perspectives. Action breaks up the darkness and allows for that light switch to come on. Action prevents you from making excuses because you’re too busy working and making things happen.

This is a reminder for me and for you…No excuses—given or taken!

~Natasha