No More Excuses!
Controlling Your Destiny by Overcoming Excuses That Block Your Success (Part 2 of 9)

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(…continued from last week)

Action on Purpose

I am the proud father of four children. And those children have broken windows. One of my children broke more windows than all the other three put together. It was all accidental. At least I think it was all accidental. That’s what I was told and I tended to believe Ryan.

The other day he and I were talking about this and we were laughing about all the windows that had been broken, usually from baseballs more than anything else. He learned a lesson from me. I always told my kids, “If you break something just tell me as soon as you can and you won’t be in trouble unless of course you broke it on purpose.”

Now if you did it on purpose, then you’re in trouble. But if you come and tell me it’s fine, we’ll take care of it. I might not be happy but it’s not a big deal. You just have to tell me what went on. We’ll take it from there.

The only time you would really get in trouble is if you would try and hide things from me or try and sneak stuff away from me and try to make it so I don’t find out about it. Then you’ll be in trouble because that’s lying. And I don’t tolerate lying so don’t lie to me. If something bad happens tell me. We’ll deal with it, just don’t hide it, lie, blame, make excuses, or try and get out of it.

Make It Safe

I remember the first time this happened. I was working in the front yard and Ryan came around from the back and found me. He said, “Dad, I have something you’ve got to see.” And standing about three paces behind Ryan was his buddy Jeff who he’d been playing catch with. They played Little League together.

So we went around back and Ryan pointed to this window. It was about an 8 by 12 inch window. It was a multiple frame window, and there was a broken pane,

Jeff was about half hiding and he looked like he was going to burst into tears because he knew they were in trouble. Now Jeff’s dad was a good guy but he maybe was a little tougher in some ways than I was, and probably a little more of a disciplinarian in different ways than I am. So Jeff was really taking this hard. Ryan wasn’t quite sure because I’d always told him you’re not in trouble if you tell me and he was really seeing if it was going to hold true.

So I said, “Okay, what happened?” Well they were playing catch in our backyard – and we had a pretty big backyard – and they were throwing it back and forth. One of them was standing beside the house and the other one was standing a ways away in the yard.

Where the yard met the sidewalk by the back of the house there was a three inch lip that stuck up. The sidewalk was a little higher than the yard was. When the ball was thrown it hit that little bump on the sidewalk and popped up in the air and flew right through the window.

A Learning Experience

So I said, “Okay, no big deal guys. I’ll tell you what. You’re going to learn something valuable today.” They looked at me and I looked at them. They didn’t know whether they were in trouble or not. I said, “Let’s go.”

I stopped what I was doing, which wasn’t anything urgent and I got them in the car. We drove down to this little hardware store about a mile away, and I bought some window glazing, some points for the window, a new window pane and took it back. On the way home I bought them each a Slurpee. They were thinking ‘we can’t be in too much trouble; we got a Slurpee on the way, pretty good deal’.

So we arrived home and I took the broken glass out, scraped out the putty around the window, and then had them come over. I said, “Watch.” So I showed them how I put the points in to hold the glass in. I then fixed one edge of the window and I said, “Okay Ryan, you’re going to do this side of the window, Jeff you’re going to do that side and I’ll do the top because that’s the hardest one.”

It took forever. But you should have seen the look of pride on their faces when they each finished doing that crappy job they did of putting that window in. You would think that they had just painted the Mona Lisa.

What happened was that they each learned ‘I don’t have to be perfect’. I can make mistakes. I can get in trouble for things but it’s not the end of the world. And it’s better to deal with what comes up, when it comes up, than to try and hide it.

It’s okay to make a mistake number one, and two it’s also okay to fix the mistakes you make. Once again, excuses and justifications result because primarily there’s fear but also because of a lack of belief in one’s self; when we feel less than or embarrassed or ashamed. Excuses come from some sort of a feeling of weakness. They are a way to try and get off the hook for something we’ve done.

(to be continued…)

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