What is Your Excuse?

Last Update: January 24, 2011

I was inspired by this blog post and wanted to share it with my fellow WA'ers:

 

What’s Your Excuse for Not Achieving
Your Goals?

What's Your Excuse? | <a target=copyblogger.com" title="What's Your Excuse? | copyblogger.com" width="250" height="324" />

ex•cuse
n. ik-skyoos
An explanation offered as a reason for being excused; a plea offered in extenuation of a fault or for release from an obligation, promise, etc.

I don’t have enough money.

It’s too hard to find an audience.

I don’t have enough time.

I don’t have the talent.

I started blogging too late.

I don’t have a quiet place to work.

I’m tired.

Nobody will hire me.

Really?

Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace while living in a small house with his wife and 13 children.

Greta Garbo held steady through seven months of hardball silence after negotiating a new (fair) contract with Louis B. Mayer. Mayer eventually caved and she got her price.

Walt Disney was a failed, bankrupt, small-time ad man before that whole mouse thing happened.

J.K. Rowling was on the dole. Her first Harry Potter book was rejected by twelve publishers. It was eventually purchased by the relatively small Bloomsbury in London, and that only because the CEO’s daughter begged him to print it.

Mark Twain sunk $300,000 of his own money (and much of his wife’s) into a typesetting machine that was eventually, brutally, made obsolete.

e.e. cumming’s first book of poetry was rejected by fifteen publishers. He self-published it, dedicated it to the fifteen rejectors, and became one of America’s greatest poets.

Crippled by depression, self-doubt, and living in a cruelly sexist era, Mary Anne Evans changed her identity to George Eliot and became one of the most beloved English novelists of all time.

 

Abraham Lincoln lost multiple jobs, went bankrupt, and failed in numerous bids for public office before being sworn in as the 16th President of the United States.

Georges Simenon completed each of his legendary Maigret detective novels in an undisturbed, 11-day sprint.

Isaac Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime. Oh, and that’s in addition to being a professor of biochemistry at Boston University.

So you’re going to let your excuses stop you? Really?

Go ahead and drop your favorite excuses in the comments below. Then let us know what you’re going to pull off when you quit listening to them …

 

From Copyblogger:  http://www.copyblogger.com/whats-your-excuse/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Copyblogger+(Copyblogger)

 

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Wayne Hudler Premium
I have a saying about excuses: Excuses are like hot dogs. They have the skin of a reason but are stuffed with a lie.

Press forward.
Having excuses is essentially the same thing as saying a problem is bigger than you are.
iw99 Premium
Great inspirational post. My excuse, and what I'll pull off, I'll say for my own blog post as it may be pretty long.
Hazie Premium
Great examples of perseverance. And, if we believe in what we're doing, we often have many, seeming insurmountable obstacles before --- the big whatever. Many thanks.
Labman_1 Premium
No excuses, just action.
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