It’s Time to Empower Reason, Not Excuses.

Concepts that are contrary or identical? The apology of motivation.

We are so weak sometimes. We don’t talk enough about this laziness, this destructive scourge, and in particular the partisan of self-sabotage (but what would our life be without a pinch of drama, really). And it’s to this spreading laziness that we take malicious pleasure in adorning it with excuses to reduce the growing guilt attached to it. We embellish it; we double our efforts to prove laziness is right.

Is there a difference between “excuse” and “reason”? Yes, fundamentally.

Excuse feeds on denial, reason feeds on itself.

The reason is simply self-sufficient. Needless to say, excuses are often followed by a lack of motivation, sometimes even a lack of meaning, and laziness (the dreaded one). Wouldn’t it be enough to just look at one’s Ikigai anymore? You know this method which consists of refocusing on ourselves to detect our deep values to choose a task in phase with these values, the market price but also with our deepest desires.

Yay! I have already covered the subject in this article below.

But let’s be honest. I’ve done this Ikigai many times, and yet the motivation keeps going randomly.

To be in line with my new 2021 resolutions, I dove into the subject. Because we have no time to lose, it’s already January.

Excuses alter our motivation.

Making excuses is giving the reason for non-action. Just “finding,” an excuse asks effort. The effort that we want to avoid at all costs is there. It deals comfortably with our guilt (and feeds it).

What if we put our efforts into action rather than into our own exculpation?

Let’s make it a little more fun. Challenges are in vogue on TikTok, let’s give them a soul on Medium.

I challenge you from two excuses to justify a cramped laziness, you must trade it for the initial action you had to take.

Let me explain.

If you can put enough intellectual effort into more than two excuses (yes, three excuses are already too much), it means that the basic action was important enough to make you feel guilty. You are therefore entering a phase where you are accountable… to yourself.

Did we say intellectual efforts? What if the task in question requires physical effort? Or a movement that calls for imminent laziness.

The whole thing is to create intrinsic motivation, either specific to oneself and to one’s deepest desires (hello again, Ikigaï), but also extrinsic motivation or specific to the environment in which one is immersed. This article explains the subject very well. Let’s try to explain this motivation problem together.

First tip:

It is necessary to create a routine that should not be deviated from under any circumstances. It can be in the form of an Excel schedule (heyyy the accountants), a bullet journal, or a paper calendar. Let your creativity speak for itself!

It’s better to create it very lightly at the beginning, so as not to let oneself go too blithely into surrealist actions and objectives… #weknowit.

Second tip:

Create a dynamic environment. I’m getting there…

Why is it that when we are the busiest, our motivation springs up?

Admit that it’s when you’re juggling a full-time job (or several part-time jobs) when you have kids and tons of sports and/or creative activities (yours, theirs) that you have a lot of ideas but so little time to implement them.

Why doesn’t this intellectual stimulation happen when you’re unemployed, single, and childless?

Because it is in a dynamic and continuously active environment that our brain is stimulated. We are “in the bath” in a way (French expression, but you got the idea, right?). In a supportive context for motivation. And we need to create this context to give a boost to our routine.

First tip:

Set time slots for work, creative activities, but also relaxation.

Creating a very dense schedule can be as motivating as it is depressing. And we know which spiral attracts the second adverb… (please refer to the beginning of the article). But we are here to find solutions, aren’t we? #dontgiveup.

The point is to vary the pleasures, to progress, and to boost your performance both in the sector of your work and in your own creative activities.

But be careful not to sabotage this desire for performance with an obsession and then forgetting your humanity… #drama.

Here an article I wrote regarding this obsession with performance:

Second tip:

Cliché but true: doing sports. No more need to prove the effects of sports on our brain (well okay… Here’s an article that proves it again).

Dancer in the soul, a boxer in my character, one is vital to me in my daily life and the other is essential although punctual. The whole thing is to find your own balance. There are times when the sport takes a big part of my life, from 6 to 10 hours a week, and then there are times when I need to concentrate on other activities (it can be having some drinks with people, but let’s think of it as the development of my social life, shall we? An excuse? Mhmm…), to get down to 3–5 hours of sports per week (that’s still a big deal. Essential I said!).

In any case, sport is part of my life. But let’s be honest, without taking classes, it wouldn’t be as much of a part of my life.

I think that spending money on a sports activity is somehow pushing me to go to classes. But more importantly, it succeeds in keeping the activity to be sustainable.

Because, although I am proven passionate, dancing alone without classes, without a teacher with sound advice, is far from being easy. You get motivated for a week, maybe a month, but the routine tends to be abandoned. I tested it during the quarantine, and even before that with yoga. But doing sports alone requires a higher level of motivation, and abandonment is at your fingertips (the business model of fitness centers relies on our motivation to get there…).

Of course, gyms are not free, but having a class at a specific time has an even greater impact on our routine.

Ask yourself the right question: is this an excuse or a reason?

Let’s go back to the terms that brought us here. In a purely subjective way and based on my own experience, I would say that an excuse is ephemeral, fragile, and not really assumed. A reason, on the other hand, is more concrete and is based on exogenous facts that we cannot control.

A reason becomes an excuse when you have the power to change it.

So, you know what you have to do, right?