Sorry, I can’t make it … this week is just too busy.
I wish I could help with that … but I have too much going on right now.
I want to hang out … but I’m too tired; I think I’ll just stay in tonight.
We’ve all uttered these statements at some point. And sometimes we really mean them—we have a tight work deadline or the flu or we have to take our kids four different places that day, so we actually can’t do the thing that’s asked of us (or that we ask of ourselves).
But have our excuses become too convenient?
There is one party that loves a convenient excuse: our internal resistance. We are wired to resist things that prompt negative feelings like boredom, discomfort, or fear. So, what happens when modern culture gives us an easy way to resist these things with socially accepted excuses like busyness? We end up letting ourselves off the hook more often than we should—and more often than we really want. Instead of just saying no to things we can’t do, we also use “I’m too busy” to avoid things we just don’t feel like doing.
The problem is that the important things in life—building and maintaining relationships, caring for our kids or aging parents, pursuing interesting goals or hobbies, making meaningful contributions to the world—sometimes require doing things that we might not really feel like doing in the moment. But, if we give our resistance free rein and only show up for our friends when it’s convenient for us, it will be hard to maintain a friendship. If we always complain that we’re too tired to exercise, it will be hard to stay physically fit. And if we keep telling ourselves we’ll take that trip “someday when things settle down,” we might never take it.
The consequences of investing too little in our long-term values might not be as immediate or obvious as the overwhelm we experience when we take on too much, but it can still have a significant impact on our well-being. Overwhelm and burnout can make life feel bad, but avoiding them isn’t enough to make life good.
For life to be good, we need to need to do more than just subtract the negative; we also need to add the positive. We need meaning, connection, joy, purpose, and awe. But pursuing these values can sometimes require the kind of slow, hard, awkward, and deep work that makes our resistance cringe. Our resistance will try to grab onto any excuse it can for why we can’t or shouldn’t or don’t need to do the work right now.
So, how do we make it harder for resistance to win?
If we want to make it harder for our resistance to latch onto excuses, we can set up our defaults and thresholds so there’s less of an opportunity for excuses to creep in where we don’t want them.
Here’s what that looks like:
Making our default "yes" lowers the decision-making burden, and setting a high threshold takes away some of the wiggle room for resistance. Sticking with a default of "yes" is easier than having to decide from scratch every time. The only time we even need to consider whether we should follow through is when we’re near our threshold. And if we set our threshold high enough, that won’t happen nearly as often.
This can be especially helpful for things we want to do but often don’t feel like doing in the moment. Suppose I really want to get in shape, but I don’t usually find myself having a hankering for going to the gym or going outside for a walk. Instead of just waiting around for exercise inspiration to strike, I can make working out my default choice and then not let myself override it unless I have a really good reason.
So, when it gets to my scheduled workout time and I have the flu or my kid has a school concert, I know that those exceed my excuse threshold and I can reschedule my workout. But if it’s workout time and I’m just feeling a little tired or I’d rather scroll on my phone, I’m going to tell myself to still do it. I know that “I'm feeling a little tired” and “I’d rather scroll on my phone than work out right now” are not good-enough reasons to get over my excuse threshold. If they were, I would almost never work out.
This doesn’t mean that we should never sit on the couch and scroll Instagram or binge-watch Netflix or bail on a party for a quiet night in. We can still intentionally set aside time for these things.
What we want to avoid are the unintentional ways we get sucked into things that don’t really matter to us, especially when this gets in the way of the things that do. If we often find ourselves mindlessly drifting toward what’s easy, quick, and comfortable, we should be wary of our appeals of being “too busy” or “too tired.” If we’re constantly avoiding the hard work of pursuing our deeper values, we might be overusing excuses to our own detriment.
Of course, making our default "yes" and setting a high threshold for overriding it won’t stop us from trying to get away with flimsy excuses. Our resistance might still try to convince us that we’re too busy or tired even when we’re not. And sometimes we’ll believe it. Other times, we’ll know it’s a flimsy excuse and we’ll give in anyway.
We’re not after perfection here. We can’t expect ourselves to never give in to excuses. But, we can at least give ourselves a fighting chance against resistance so we can show up for more of the life we really want.
© Jen Zamzow, Ph.D., 2024
Are You Too Good at Making Excuses?
24
0
28.03.2024
Sorry, I can’t make it … this week is just too busy.
I wish I could help with that … but I have too much going on right now.
I want to hang out … but I’m too tired; I think I’ll just stay in tonight.
We’ve all uttered these statements at some point. And sometimes we really mean them—we have a tight work deadline or the flu or we have to take our kids four different places that day, so we actually can’t do the thing that’s asked of us (or that we ask of ourselves).
But have our excuses become too convenient?
There is one party that loves a convenient excuse: our internal resistance. We are wired to resist things that prompt negative feelings like boredom, discomfort, or fear. So, what happens when modern culture gives us an easy way to resist these things with socially accepted excuses like busyness? We end up letting ourselves off the hook more often than we should—and more often than we really want. Instead of just saying no to things we can’t do, we also use “I’m too busy” to avoid things we just don’t feel like doing.
The problem is that the important things in life—building and maintaining relationships, caring for our kids or aging parents, pursuing interesting goals or hobbies, making meaningful contributions to the world—sometimes require doing things that we might not........
© Psychology Today
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