A Conversation with Wayne Dyer ~ by Ellen Mahoney

Mahoney: What's the payoff for living a life filled with excuses?

Wayne Dyer: There’s a payoff for everyone. The reason we hang on to self-defeating behaviors is because it’s easier not to take responsibility. If you’re blaming something or someone else for the way you are, then that person, those people, those circumstances or those energies, are going to have to change in order for you to get better; that’s most likely never going to happen. It’s also a way to manipulate other people.

Usually, making excuses is just something we can get away with, rather than challenging or changing ourselves. If you want to change and you want your life to work at a level you’ve never had before, then take responsibility for it.

I’m not saying that a child who was abused or beaten or abandoned made that happen, but your reaction to it is always yours. While you were four, you didn’t know anything other than being terrified and scared; you’re not four any longer. Now [as an adult] you have to make a choice and recognize that even the abuse that came into your life offers you an opportunity to transcend it, to become a better person and even more significantly, to help someone else not go through what you did.

Mahoney: What common excuses do people use in grappling with their conscience?

Wayne Dyer: Excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don’t like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don’t know how to change. In Excuses Begone! I review 18 of the most common excuses people use, such as “I’m too busy, too old, too fat, too scared or it’s going to take too long or be too difficult.” 

We spend a big hunk of our lifetimes contemplating what we can’t have, what we don’t want and what’s missing in our lives. What we have to learn is to put our attention and focus on contemplating what it is we would like to attract, and not on what is missing.

Source: A Conversation with Wayne Dyer by Ellen Mahoney, naturalawakeningsmag.com