I’ve been thinking a lot about excuses recently. About why people make excuses and how we use some internal rationalization or misguided logic to craft the excuses into reasons.

“I didn’t make that phone call because…”

“I didn’t speak up at the meeting because…”

“I didn’t raise my hand to answer the question because…”

“I haven’t started that project yet because…”

And so on. You get the picture.

When you boil it all down, I think most people make excuses for two reasons. First is laziness. Some folks just don’t have the desire or ambition to extend themselves. This probably happens a lot. Laziness is probably a reason for a good number of excuses. But I don’t think laziness accounts for most of the excuses we make.

The second reason, and probably the reason behind most of the excuses we hear and the excuses we make: is fear.

Fear that you might mess it up.

Fear that you might embarrass yourself.

Fear that you might lose your job.

Fear that you might be wrong.

Fear that you might be right.

Fear can be a great action paralyzer. But it can also be a great action motivator. Oftentimes when I have a decision to make, I think that if the course of action in question doesn’t make me even a little bit uncomfortable, then it is probably not worth pursuing.

The uncomfortableness is that feeling in your stomach. It’s that voice in your head telling you “no”. Seth Godin calls this the Lizard Brain. He talks about it in his book Linchpin (affiliate link). Check it out. It’s another good gift for the holidays.

How about you? Do you let fear paralyze you? Or does it motivate you?