By Dani Johnson

I’m blown away with the amount of excuses that people can come up with. It’s ridiculous and completely endless how people invent them in order not to succeed. Most people spend their entire life instantaneously choosing excuses.
Excuses are so engrained into us that it becomes a knee-jerk reaction, something we instantly come up with for reasons why we can’t do something instead of coming up with ideas how to make it happen. We’ve been conditioned for excuses by the media, Internet, advertising, and movies.
But, what about results? Why aren’t we conditioned for them instead of for reasons and excuses?

I’ve always said that the definition of an excuse is a well-planned lie.

“Gosh, I’d love to but I’m kind of busy.”

“I don’t have the time for that.”

“I’m too old (or too young).”

“I’m too fat (or too skinny).”

“I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.”

I believe that this is the number one roadblock that keeps people from success! Let me share my own personal story about excuses.

Twenty years ago when I was homeless during the month of December, I allowed excuses to take me down a path of destruction. My reasons were real. I had no money and no job. My husband had deserted me in Hawaii for another woman who was in Japan and took off with everything. He drained my bank account and left me with $2.03 to my name and a $35,000 credit card debt with no chance of charging anything else on them. Nothing was going right and I let these reasons make me homeless and turn to drugs. This was the worst thing I could have ever done.

At the beach, I dived into a wave. When I came up, I heard a voice that said “pick up your mat and walk!” I did, and never looked back. The next day, I started a business out of the trunk of my car and made $2,000 in four days.

What changed on that next day? Nothing changed. I still had no money. I was still homeless with a husband who had deserted me and a father who hated me. My circumstances were exactly the same. Nothing around me shifted except for one thing—I made a decision. I made a choice.

Until I said, “Enough is enough! God didn’t intend for me to be mediocre. It’s time for me to shut up, step up and do something.” That’s when my circumstances began to change. Because I made a decision at that moment, the rest is history.

After coaching and training thousands of people all of these years, I’ve found this to be the number one reason for business failure—indecision. In my opinion, making a decision is the number one thing that will get you on the fast track to success!  Those that succeeded simply made a decision to do whatever it takes to make it. They made a decision that “enough was enough!” They were tired of looking at two cans of beans and having to choose the lesser priced one because that’s what the checkbook dictated.

Until you make a decision to change and do whatever it takes to make it, you will continually be blocked from true and long-lasting success. Do the number one thing that will get you on the fast track to success—make a decision and kiss excuses goodbye!