Day 89: On Not Making Excuses
You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option.
Self-discipline comes down to choosing between instant and delayed gratification. Instant gratification feels good today but compromises your long-term goals, while delayed gratification usually doesn’t deliver much in the way of instant pleasure, but it can lead to bigger rewards in the future.
Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation in which you’ll be able to make excuses; they may even sound so sensible that (upon hearing your rationalizations) nobody would question your backing out of that situation. However, don’t let them fool you — even if there’s some
legitimacy to them, in most cases it’s still nothing other than choosing instant gratification.
For example, if you want to establish a habit of jogging three times a week and one day it rains and you’re afraid you’ll get sick, you have a valid excuse to skip exercise. After all, there is
a higher risk of getting sick when running in bad weather, right?
However, it sets a dangerous precedent: you’re making a decision that your habits depend on the weather. Your self-control (or your lack of it) is now at the mercy of external factors, largely dependent on whether jogging in the given circumstances is easy or not. Is this the right way to build mental toughness and self-discipline
?
If you decide to keep going instead of defaulting to the easy choice of using (partly valid) excuses, you’ll immensely strengthen your resolve. It takes even more discipline — and consequently offers a greater opportunity to exercise your self-control muscle — to stick to something when you have a good justification to not do it.