The Excuse Factory

One behavior I see time and time again is the ability of people to create excuses.  For example, I've seen this in all kinds of work settings over the years.  One person says a certain change can't happen.  Yet if they leave the position and someone else comes in, then the change often magically happens.

People make a lot of excuses when they don't want to change.  I ran into this a good bit when I was teaching college also.  I would always start off each semester with what I called the "$100,000" question.  I asked the students that if they would be rewarded with $100,000 if they got an A in the class, how many thought they could accomplish it.  Almost all hands went up every time.  But of course, not everyone got A's.  So to me, it was primarily a motivation problem: they had the ability to achieve the goal, but the motivation wasn't clear or strong enough over the course of a semester.

This same problem of course happens with weight loss.  Plans are made and broken.  And if a person is called out on it, they will often fire up the "excuse factory" and continue creating excuses until they create a semi-plausible one.

I think it's better to be honest about these things.  If a person tries something and it doesn't work, well then just try again or try a different method.  There's no need to cover things up with a web of excuses.  It's really a matter of taking responsibility: each person is captain of their own ship.