Many times our reward system is safety.  We feel safe not to engage in a new behavior because it is risky, dangerous.  Excuses allow us to blame others for our own faults.  “I can’t afford it” may mean “You buy it for me, or “Because you are rich that is why you succeed.  I am just poor.”  We accept our limitations because it is far easier not to accept the truth of our own responsibility. We blame others for our inadequacies rather than taking ownership.  Do something that feels unsafe.  Get out of your own safety habits.  Take an unplanned vacation.  Where a piece of clothing that you would not normally do.  When we start to do something that feels unsafe (but that would not jeopardize our lives!), we can begin to feel how it feels to do something bold, which is typically very good.

Another way to let our guard down is to let go of ego.  The way that we conduct ourselves is almost always in a semi-combative attitude with another.  We must win.  We must be right.  We must be stronger.  All of these positions come from ego.  When you get into a discussion, start with, “Oh, you are right about that.”  What?  You conceded?  Yes.  Once that happens, there is peace.  Without positions, we let our egos go.  Let go of your ego, explore how to get out of your ego by thinking of a bold move, and allow yourself the freedom to be free of excuses by looking at what you would gain if you changed your paradigm.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of blogs that celebrate the teachings of Dr. Wayne Dyer.  We all have a lot to learn including me, and I appreciate your taking this journey with me of life, love, peace, and joy!

Ultimately, we need to aknowledge that our excuses came from within, i.e., from ourselves.  When we take ownership of the excuse rather than try to blame someone else, we can begin to see that we have an ability to free ourselves.  For as long as we say, “My parents are that way, that is why I am this way, “ we remain trapped.  When we way, “I have always been that way, that is my nature,” then we do not allow our capacity to take ownership of where we came from and that we can change.

I like Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote in the Birmingham city jail on April 16, 1963: “We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’.  When we say, “The rules won’t let me do it,” we may in fact be following arbitrary rules that were prescribed from false authorities that confine our actions.  Following our heart is the most steady and truest guide to our own destiny.  Follow your heart and free yourself of your excuses.

Perhaps my best paradigm shift this past year was that I enjoyed unhealthy food and now I don’t.  I worked out a lot but still liked a big old fashioned hamburger.  Now, it is not to say that I don’t like some fries every now and again (everything in moderation) but now I really truly have shifted my relationship with food.  In the past, I would shove down whatever was in front of me without restraint.  However, after going to France and eating slowly and focusing on healthier, greener foods my diet has radically changed.  I relish fresh foods.  As you know, I also read Michael Pollan’s books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (an upcoming blog series) and In Defense of Food, that radically shifted my perspective on food.  As I always say, the power of positive thinking is bunk.  It must be a more fundamental change in our perceptions.  We cannot sugar coat our feeling or perception.  We must believe in its veracity.  We must adopt a new paradigm.  It all starts by questioning the truth of our last paradigm, or at least entering the possibility of a small chink in the armor.  I never thought that I would not be drinking a diet coke every day or not enjoying fried food anymore.  However, these items are way down on my list of things I even remotely enjoy.  Today, fruits, vegetables, and healthier foods turn me on!  Open your heart and mind to what outdated paradigms need to be discarded so that you can embrace a bright, shining new one!

1. Stop labeling- Many times we append words to action that not only condemn the action but the person committing it.  He uses the example of “I am forgetful” for his forgetting his keys all the time.  This attitude compelled him to live up to his own expectations of forgetfulness, and he continued to forget his keys.  He first stopped labeling himself as an individual of forgetfulness and worked to become more aware of his keys, how they felt in his hands, the action he took upon leaving his car or his house, and he saw how the forgetfulness started to dissipate.  Stop condemning yourself for a past action or thought and become free of it by removing any labels you might have about it.
2. Start living life fully in the now- We have probably addressed this issue so much that it is almost not worth repeating here, but it is.  We can live life in a very mundane routine when we stop feeling our surroundings.  When we sit in a chair, we don’t feel the chair.  When we eat food, it is tasteless because we are thinking about what we need to do in 10 minutes.  We don’t enjoy the company we keep because our mind is somewhere else.  Constrain yourself to feel everything around you and fully live in the moment.  When you do so, you liberate yourself from the pervading, nagging judgment that you hold in your conscious and subconscious mind and you begin to truly feel connected with the moment.
3. Stop complaining and explaining- When we complain we essentially create a verbal excuse about our behavior, “Oh, it is not my fault, did you see what she did to me?”  We hold other people accountable and try to free ourselves from our own actions.  Remember to try to live by the first of the four agreements, to be impeccable with your word, meaning to be clean with how you say things.  That will help remove our constant need to complain about ourselves and of others.  Many people may not accept you or may doubt your intentions.  You may feel the need to explain your situation to them.  Allow yourself the freedom to stop explaining everything you do.  You can keep your explanations to a small cadre of friends and family who truly understand you deeply.
4. Live in a supportive and caring world- The world is how we create that world.  If we see other people as negative toward us, we will live in such a fashion.  If we see that other people are essentially kind and want to help us, we will have more help than we need.  We create the environment we want by how we see it.  Changing our attitude will become an important first step to change our world.  Excuses do not live in a world that is free of hostility and blame.  Excuses only live in a world that we create and won’t let go because we need them to get by.  Co-create your world as a loving, kind world and live that way.

For some of my longstanding blog followers, you will remember a series of blogs on compassion from the Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness.  We now explore that concept more in detail in the following stories:

A woman kneeling by a river encountered a lustrous, precious stone.  She held it up in her hands in admiration and then stowed it away in her knapsack for safekeeping.  A starving man meandered near the river and spied the woman.  He asked desperately, “Would you have any food to spare me please for I have not eaten in three days.”  The woman opened her knapsack to give him a crust of bread.  The man glimpsed the precious stone in the bag and wished he had the stone that would solve all of his woes, provide him with security, and offer him enough food to sustain him.  He asked the woman, “Could I please have that stone?”  The woman gleefully reached into the sack and handed her stone over to the man.  The man in astonishment took the stone and scurried away.  Several days later, the man returned to the river to give the stone back to the woman.  The woman looked quizzically at the man.  He then explained, “I do not want the stone but I would like to have instead what you have that allowed you to give that stone away.”  That is compassion.  When all that the woman saw was a man in need more than she was and she gave that stone away without thinking, she practiced profound compassion.

Another story of compassion that Dyer tells is Leo Tolstoy’s Three Questions.  In this story a king wants to succeed and believes he can do so if he could have three questions answered:  1) when is the best time to take action, 2) who are the most important people to interact with, and 3) what is the most important action to take.  He enlisted the help of many learned men who came to his kingdom in hope of a mighty prize for their efforts.  Each gave his own opinion that conflicted with another’s, and the king ultimately refused all these learned insights because he did not agree with any of them.

Frustrated, the king ventured out into the forest in search of a famously wise hermit.  He shed his royal vestments and journeyed unkempt, unshaven, and in beggar’s clothing.  Upon arriving, he asked the hermit his three questions.  The hermit refused answer but instead went outside to tend the garden.  Seeing that this frail man was in need of assistance, the king took over the duty of pulling out the weeds and planting the vegetables.  After a few hours, the king asked the hermit the same questions again but received another mute response.

Just then, the king and the hermit encountered a man bleeding profusely from the abdomen from a sword wound.  They rushed him into the house, held pressure over the wound, bandaged him, and gave him food and water until he was fully revived.  The man said to the king, “I heard that you king were coming out alone by horse to see this hermit so I intended to come to kill you since you executed my brother and stole my property.  Not having returned back to the forest, I waited for you but then I encountered your bodyguards who sliced my belly, and you saved me.  For that, I have given up revenge and will be your servant for life.”  The king replied, “I am so sorry for my past actions.  You shall have your property back, and I shall send my servants and physicians to tend to you until you are fully well again.”

The king then asked the hermit again to answer his three questions.  The hermit responded that the answer was already given.  The king looked befuddled.  The hermit replied, “When you saw me, you had pity for me so you helped me tend my garden.  If you had not done that, you would have returned earlier via the forest and would have been killed by the man whom we saved.  When you saw the man in trouble, you helped the man and by doing so have restored peace and have given the chance for a man to reconcile with you.   So to answer your question, the best time to act is now.  The most important person to be with is the one you are with now and no one else.  You must treat that person with as much compassion and love as possible.  And the best actions to take are ones that help your fellow brother.”

When we live in compassion for others, we start to see God.  When we live to help and to give, we gain so much more.  Excuses go away by themselves when we begin to give.  I had a young teenage man who had come to me spurned by a woman and who desired plastic surgery to restore his self-image.  He came to me after 5 pm unscheduled, and I was on the way out the door.  I listened to his problems and recommended that he read the 4 Agreements and the Power of Now, and I said the best way to get him out of his funk is to start with an act of compassion.  Give of yourself to someone else and you will reap far greater rewards.  Our excuses go when we start and end with compassion.

Sometimes we behave in such a fashion because our new vision is incompatible with our old vision, one that we hold onto that lingers despite our conscious level acknowledgment.  We say, “I want an advanced degree.”  Then we say to ourselves somewhere deep down, “I don’t have enough time” so we make efforts to fill our days so we don’t have enough time then we tell our unconscious self, “See, I don’t have enough time.”  We say, “I want to become fit” then we say, “Boy, that knee of mine is really acting up again.  I guess I shouldn’t really start just yet.  I’ll see the doctor next month, then we’ll make a decision then.”  We are our own worst enemies.

Our vision should be our vision and no one else’s.  Sometimes we fear the repercussions of others’ thoughts and words about what we are trying to do.  “Why are you trying to go back to school at 45 years of age?  Are you crazy?”  I love the line that Dyer has here, “What you think of me is none of my business.”  That is hilarious and so true.  We should not live as a byproduct of someone else’s prejudices but we should live in congruence with what we want.  What lie is your unconscious mind feeding your conscious mind about what you really want?  What actions are you taking to prevent you from attaining your goal?  What are you worried that someone else will say about you?

That being prefaced, like Tolle, Dyer admonishes that to live in the now free of thinking of the future and thinking of the past, we can avoid almost all excuses.  The words, “My parents were like that so how I can act differently?” forces us into the past (our past prevents us from doing something) when?  in the future.  Another excuse would be, “it is too risky”.  That is future think because it has not happened yet but we assume that it will unfold in such a manner.  When we are ensconced in the present, we begin to see that excuses cannot take hold of us.

Dyer invokes his study of the Tao by talking about “allowing” and “not judging”.  When we live in the moment, we can live in the moment without reference to the past or to the future but we can still live a very negatively imbued present tense.  For example, “I am wasting my time here,” or “why is she saying that to me?”  We also can force things harder if the square peg does not fit into the circular aperture.  We coerce the situation to proceed in a certain way.  Remembering our Taoist image that was invoked in a previous Mindfulness Monday, we should be like water, flowing effortlessly, naturally, and with vigor.   Live in the now.

Dyer talks about an invisible energy that radiates all around us, which I believe in.  This is not a voodoo thing but a reflection of our inner spirit.  When we are nervous, we radiate that to everyone even before our words are expressed or our mannerisms give us away.  The tension we hold is manifest to anyone in our near vicinity and beyond.  When we try to enlist “Divine guidance” for our situation, we oftentimes go to God out of necessity by remaining in a state of want.  However, the Divine is unlimited and positive.  We are limited and negative.  It is very difficult to hear any Divine messages when we are confined by our own negative thinking.  When we live by ego, scarcity, fear, and anxiety, then we live in ego, scarcity, fear, and anxiety.  When we see our own Divine nature, we can then tap into Divine providence, Divine messages, and Divine guidance.

How do we do that more precisely?  Instead of living in a fearful state of wanting more and fearing less, we live in a state of unbridled gratitude for what we have.  At the end of each yoga session that I do I bow down 3 times with my hands in Namaste pose in gratitude for His Divine favor upon me and upon all mankind.  Interestingly, Dyer talks about a happiness index that was undertaken to measure how happy a particular country is.  Nigera, an impoverished country by Western standards, came out on top; and the United States ranked 46 out of 50.  Why?  Simply put, no matter how scarce Nigerians may be physically, their mental state did not see the deprivation.  Conversely, Americans oftentimes live in a state of ego demanding that they need more (when they don’t) and they fear less (scarcity mentality).  That is misalignment:  when you are well off and you still think you do not have enough.

This week focus on removing negative mental and verbal speak from your language.  When you catch yourself with any of the above excuses catalog or negative commentary than runs in your head, replace them with an ego-less gratitude for your abundant condition and be thankful.

In fact, that is what all of these blogs are truly about, getting to the core of your authentic self, free from the shackles of self delusion, false ego, and mental trickery.  By reading and implementing these blogs as part of your daily ritual, we are all on a mutual journey of enlightenment, peace, and happiness.  In so doing, we shed our false self and become gradually more self aware.  In that process of self awareness, we begin to recognize our excuses as being incompatible with our true self.

We can use both our conscious mind to delve into what might our excuses be in life and we can also channel our more powerful, deeply seated unconscious mind to engage in a continual exploration of those excuses, to root them out, and thereby to place them in front of us as external to us.  We then can rid ourselves of these false memes and genes.  Today and in the coming weeks to months, focus on your true self and where your excuses that might be staring you in the face but you can’t see might truly be nothing more than an excuse.

For example, excuses that we have programmed are as follows:  ”It is too risky to change”; “My family genes limit me from doing it”; “It has never been done”; “It is too big to do”; “I don’t have enough energy”; “I’ve always been fat”; “I am not smart enough”; “I am not strong enough”; etc.  He punctures each and every one of these myths by enumerating tactics to overcome them.  Dyer should know, as he quit drugs, smoking, affairs, and drinking decades ago in a former life.

As some examples, “I don’t deserve it” can be overcome by destroying your innate tendency toward low self-esteem.  As Gloria Steinem writes “self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.”  When we reprogram our belief that these programmed lies about ourselves are what restrict us, we can begin to have a chance to overcome them.  As he says, “Believing that you’re not good enough to have unlimited happiness, success, and health is a colossal fabrication that bears no resemblance to the truth of your life today.  It keeps you discouraged, with a well-intentioned excuse to protect you from taking action.”

Another example is “I am too old”.  We are never too old to love, live, learn, and fulfill our lives.  However, we live by certain societal constraints that tell us we need to have a certain education by this age, married by that time, children by an appointed schedule, a career that we want by such a such a time, etc.  We live by these “memes” that are not universal truths but just what an arbitrary society wants us to live by an arbitrary standard.  We then allow those memes to soak into our genes.

We can live independently of these constraints by believing and reprogramming both our memes and our genes.  What is your excuse catalog for why you are what you are, and what are you going to do to overcome those false beliefs today?