Loving the Chaos

April Fools’ Day has been around for hundreds of years. On this day, people like to play light-hearted practical jokes and hoaxes on friends and family. Even newspapers get in the game by slipping in a slightly far-fetched story. At some point today, you just might find that you have been tricked, deceived or had the wool pulled over your eyes in some fashion.

Here’s the real question to consider:

Are you fooling yourself?

It’s not the tricks that others pull on you. It’s the one’s you pull on yourself.

I’ll bet that somewhere in your life you are likely fooling yourself – playing a little game of denial.

It sounds something like this:

You can burn the candle at both ends and it won’t take its toll.

You can be a couch potato and make poor food choices and your body won’t mind.

You can avoid meaningful conversations with your loved ones and your relationships won’t suffer.

When you read those statements, you probably think, “Well of course you can’t.” But if you look at your behaviour you just might find that’s exactly what you have been doing.

If you have been playing the denial game for a long time, you might not even realize it.

So how do you know if you are fooling yourself?

You act like there is no cause and effect in your behaviour.

Or perhaps you keep repeating the same behaviour and are surprised that you never get different results.

Ask yourself this:

Are the results I desire a reasonable expectation of my current behaviour?

There’s another way that we hoodwink ourselves. We tend to believe that changing what we’re doing will be complicated or too hard.

Only if you want it to be.

Change begins with one simple step. Begin doing something different and then keep doing it consistently.

Eventually, as my mother used to say, the chickens always come home to roost.

Today’s just as good as any to stop fooling yourself.

Finding an excuse to not do something can be more fun than you think. Liz Krieger just shared an amusing list of excuses why you can skip your next workout. She found them in a new book by Jen Lancaster called Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, OR Why Pie is Not the Answer.

Excuses on standby

I bet you have a list of standby excuses that you pull out whenever you’re looking to avoid….well whatever you’re looking to avoid. Some basic ones that have to do with your kids’ schedules or your workload or household chores. Default excuses that reflect your willingness to put others ahead of your own self care.

We all probably give some consideration to how valid or important they sound before offering them up to other people as a justification for why we aren’t following through on something we’ve declared is important.

It seems to me though that the only person who has to believe the excuse du jour is you. Most people aren’t paying any attention to the reasons why you aren’t doing whatever it is that you think you should be doing. They’re too busy compiling their own list.

We make excuses all the time – for not working out and 101 other things that are self-nurturing. It’s our way of letting ourselves off the hook. Excuses are a great way to run away from the things that probably serve us best. I guess its a form of exercise but not one that does our hearts any good.

There’s a big difference between an excuse and a reason.

Here’s the test:

If it’s really a reason, you won’t have to give it a second thought. If you’re weighing your options, chances are you’re making an excuse. I kind of like Jen Lancaster’s list. It lets excuse making become more of a creative outlet. If you’re going to fool yourself, you might as well have some fun while you’re doing it. 

My best excuse busting tip?

Find someone who will hold you accountable….a good friend, a life coach, a relative…someone who will smile at your amusing excuse but not let you get away with it. Someone who will lovingly say, “nice try” and then kick your butt.

I once had a pact with a running partner to meet at 5:30 a.m. (yes I know what was I thinking?). We granted each other one and only one “no questions asked” excuse for missing a run during a six month period.  Any time I contemplated using my freebie excuse, I carefully weighed whether this was the time that I really wanted to use it. Maybe there would come a time when I would want to use it more. So in the course of six months, I never used it once. You can hold yourself accountable. You just need a little structure.

What’s your best excuse busting tip?