Excuses are like A$$holes.. Everyone has one!

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Excerpt -  “....Maybe success can be as simply to stop using excuses and accept and admit that they are uninterested in the hard work that is required to achieve it....”

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I expect that this topic is in a dead heat with my thoughts on religion, with reactions from those who fall victim to my ranting. Both seem taboo, and unless one tows the accepted lines, you are misguided and / or doomed to spend eternity with a guy with rather red skin, horns and a pitch fork and sweltering heat.

I enjoy the heat, so I will enter into a sharing of my thoughts on “excuses”

Let’s start on the easy ones..  I have no time in day to day life for excuses for failure.. if you take the time.. it will only require  moments recollection to think of a conversation that you have had, and heard statements such as “I would have but (insert excuse here)..” or “I am sorry I could not have completed what you asked because (insert excuse here)” or “if it weren’t for (insert excuse here).. I would have been able to...”.. I think you get the idea, and I bet you can picture a recent conversation you may have been part of... or maybe these words were excepting from your mouth.

In existing in today’s world, a long list of reasons as to why we fail are exceptionally simple to draw from. BUT... in the end, regardless of the reason.. There was failure. And we own these failures. So I am a firm advocate of cleaning out the clutter and own the failures.. It is irrelevant in EVERY case as to why we fail. We fail. There is not a valid reason in the world for failure. Maybe a reader of this is sitting back and thinking bullshit!.. “I failed last week because my co-worker did not complete the proper paperwork so I was working with the wrong information.”  - a good reason to be incompetent right? In my opinion – NOPE.. I hear that and all I hear is “I failed, blah, blah, blah”

What a more efficient world we would live in if conversations were more precise and accurate..”I failed, but I know what happened and it won’t happen again”.

There is NOTHING wrong with screwing up, or taking the fall for someone else’s lack of brains.. OWN the issue, fix it, and don’t repeat it.. No one really cares why the mistake happens, or who the cause was. But they DO respect a person accepting ownership of an error and committing to fix it.. Very simple actually. Try it.

Well that was easy.. But my true issue is a bit more Macro in scale.

Daily, in the news, and in our worlds, we find situations where meathead’s commit more that mistakes, more than simple failures, or are burdens on the taxpayer populous in one way or another. We have jails overflowing, people living in the street, throngs of welfare recipients, who exist in this state based on long lists of excuses, and “reasons” for their failed existence.

The list of excuses is a taboo one, and the core of why we accept them.. they are terrible things that have been endured; broken homes, learning difficulties, abuse, poverty, alcohol and drug addictions, trauma, PTSD and so on.

Almost always more masked or discretely reported, but to edit out the pretty words. We hear so much of : “I abuse because I was abused as a child”, “I needed to break into that house, because my parents were alcoholics”, “I can’t work because I was thrown out of school”, “they live in poverty because that is all they know”, “I lost my job because I have PTSD”. I have NO question that they are all indeed facts, and are terrible things to overcome. But we live only once, and living, failing, being a burden under the umbrella of these excuses is unacceptable.

For those that have these hurdles to overcome, it is their responsibility (unfortunately) to have to work a little harder than others to find whatever they see as success. Maybe success can be as simply to stop using excuses and accept and admit that they are uninterested in the hard work that is required to achieve it. To walk by a homeless person holding a cup for money, the situation just oozes with a long story of excuses that has that person in that state. But, he/she came into this earth in the exact same way that ever other citizen in the world, but as they faced hurdles to overcome (some bigger than others) they chose not to overcome them with hard work, but adopted them as reasons for not succeeding.

Maybe next time you see or watch the news reporting a reduced sentence on a criminal because of a trouble childhood, and having all of the cards stacked against him.. flip the TV channel to look for “Special Olympics” or “Paralympics”.

How dare I suggest that an ADHD child of a broken home, alcohol ridden family, peer abuse, family member suicides, job losses, financial distress have to deal with all of these hurdles, and “buck up” and be a productive member of society. This child/adult cannot be expected to succeed.

I did.

Bullying

I occasionally have the need to jump up on my soapbox and express a few thoughts. Even worse now that my radio station of choice for my daily commutes is CBC.  (I realized that sentence has just stopped 95% of the readers of this in their tracks and they are back to look at status updates.)

For those still reading, I was enjoying an interview this morning with three high school students and their commitment to the Anti-Bullying campaign. Of course I am very happy of the overall awareness that Anti-Bullying has found in our schools.T- Shirts, Rallies, Posters, Empowered Educators, Peer Groups.. All something that is long overdue, and certainly effective. So.... I trust that any comments below are not in any way controversial.

Growing up in an environment that bullying was not even really a word, it was more of a regular school routine, and I’m sure a lot of blank looks would result from educators, administrators, and god forbid peers with the mere mention of being mentally or physically tortured during and after the school day. Lunch hours, recesses, bus waits were more a game of hide and seek from those handing about this abuse. And not going to school, or feigning illness, I bet, were more often a result of trying to avoid this abuse than it was to try to avoid a test or handing in homework. But I am sure we are all aware of these going on from K-12.

So now in the new world of Anti-Bully and the great steps being taken, what on earth is there to write about other than a congratulatory note? It struck me as they interviewed these three high school students on CBC, and my contact with people that Bullying still exists.

My observation, or interpretation of more than just this one interview.. is that a lot of the peer organizing groups are high in percentage of victims of this  situation themselves. And educators and guidance counsellors and even parents are outside of the true culture of teens. In the mind of a bully, will they stop their behaviour towards a victim, because a teacher does not condone it? Will they stop because a group of their victims protest? I am sure the teenage mentality has not changed THAT much since I was in school. I reiterate – these programs are all critical, and proving to be somewhat effective.

A complete vanishing of Bullying.. Never I am sure.. the world remains full of insecure, low IQ, self worthless teens that can only find acceptance by being a bully.. so possibly addressing these mental deficiencies within them will find some effectiveness. Finding groups of teens that have confidence, self worth, and social skills to get behind this effort I see is critical.. so who are these untapped anti-bullying resources?

Athletes, Team Athletes. Hockey, Football, Baseball, Soccer, etc.. Yeah sure, get the Jocks to fix bullying. And yes, I expect that some of these jocks may be perpetrators as well. But a commitment from coaches, and buy in from the athletes..might just begin to turn the tide that a weak minded Bully, may begin to see that an attempt to build their own self esteem by taking someone else’s, will find them self on an island.. Alienated from all peers.. it would not take to many incidences to a soft brained teen to bully, then see that it only lowers his “status” in  school pecking order.

Victims, in addition to reporting abuse to peer groups, administrators etc.. are directly supported by the Athletic Community.. I have been involved in enough team sports to KNOW that the brother/sisterhood within a athletic group is a strong tie, and to be able to direct that significant bond towards a non-athletic goal would be very successful.

Up on my soapbox here, I am not educated enough to know the stats on what percentage of kids are bullied, are out how many out of a thousand have to suffer through this. And I don’t know the number of kids that are in athletic teams.. But I can only guess that working to align a student afraid to go to school with a group of kids that have a strongly developed peer support system in place (a team is not a team without this necessary support system) seems a natural fit.

It would not take long for a bully who is abusing a teen with this large peer support group, to be brought out in the open, and publicly be put under scrutiny of a significant group of peers. I doubt the bully would find much personal reward in this alienation. And maybe find this further blow to their already weak minds, not worth it, and prefer not to bully any further.