It’s “Black Friday” 2018 as I type this. Thanksgiving is a pleasant recent memory and we can finally justify all of the Christmas commercials and music we’ve been seeing for the past two weeks. Alongside the early commercial push for “buy buy buy!” I’ve been hearing friends talk about how the holidays were going to treat them… or more correctly, how they were going to behave during the holiday season. One thing I heard repeatedly was, “Why should I start eating clean and exercising now? It never works during the holidays. I’ll just start January first and make it a New Year’s Resolution.”  Because that always works, right? (more…)

As I think a great many people do nearly every day now, I was surfing through some social media posts and I came across this image. Courtesy of @addicted2success, the image shows Superman in handcuffs and accompanied by four soldiers in body armor, etc. It’s an image from the movie “Man of Steel.”  The phrase on it is what caught my attention: How it feels when you’re stuck in your day job and you know your true potential. (more…)

I know a woman who, at the grand old age of about eight years old, was taught that someone else was to blame.  Blame for what?  Everything. That summer she lived with some relatives and in a very short time span she gained a lot of weight. She had lived the lifestyle of those particular relatives: she ate anything she wanted, did next to no physical activity, watched a LOT of television and gained weight.  She gained about ten pounds in two weeks.  For an eight year old sized person, that’s a lot of weight. When she got home to her family complaining about how fat she was, her mother insisted it wasn’t her fault; it was the fault of the relatives who let her do that. (more…)

I feel that this saying goes along with, “Quitters never win; winners never quit.”  We all know people who just never seem to get ahead in anything they attempt and when we look at their efforts objectively, we realize it’s because they never really finish what they’re attempting.  Their failure isn’t because they can’t accomplish the task at hand; it’s because they voluntarily choose to stop trying before reaching the goal.  And then, inevitably, they offer up an excuse as to why they weren’t successful.  More often than not, the excuse places responsibility somewhere else or on someone else.  “So and so distracted me,” or “So and so kept me out partying too late last night,” or “So and so didn’t tell me I need to have that to complete this task.”  It’s always “so and so’s” fault OR there were some outside uncontrollable circumstances to blame.  The person who habitually fails at anything they attempt typically finds an excuse as to why, and (although this is a guess) I’d estimate 75% or more of the time, they don’t accept responsibility for themselves in their excuse.
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