WHERE ARE YOUR EXCUSES?

It's not uncommon to makes excuses, I'd venture to say that we've all made excuses from time to time, even when we knew the outcome would be less than stellar. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

                    "I was too busy..."

                    "I didn't really want to..."

                    "It's too hard..."

                    "Now isn't the right time..."

Problems occur when we make excuses and the outcome isn't just less-than-great, it's harmful to ourselves, others, and, in the case of this blog post, our businesses.

As a business coach, I see a lot of entrepreneurs (knowingly and unknowingly) stunting (and completely halting) their business growth from hasty and poor decision-making. It's not news that every decision has at least one consequence, but if decisions are made without planning or in haste, consequences aren't even in the picture. You're probably not going to consider something that you don't know is present. There's a lot of truth to "Out of sight, out of mind." 

So what's an entrepreneur to do? As a former teacher, I usually gravitate to the "T chart," so that's what we'll do here.

1) Make a T chart (Consists of one horizontal line and a vertical line intersecting it at a 90 degree angle...it looks like a lower-case "t")

2) On the left side (in the left column), write a decision you need to make.

3) On the right side (right column) write at least one consequence you KNOW is likely to occur from that decision.

* Your right column may end up having many consequences, and that's okay. The important thing is to get them on paper, consider them and then make your decision.

Simple. T charts can be used for large decisions like buying homes and having children or for smaller ones like starting a blog on your website.

So, wherever your excuses are at the moment, they don't have a place on your T chart. T charts are for decision-making. Excuses don't help with that.