Excuses or Explanations? (part 2)

Posted on January 29, 2023 by Seth Lusk, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Excuses are something that most of us consciously know we do not want in our lives. Last week I talked with you all about how excuses show up in your relationships with other people. I explained how you can get clear on the difference between making an excuse vs. offering an explanation. If you have not already read that blog post, I would suggest you go back and read it. It will give you some more context for what I am about to talk about here.

Last week, I also explained to you all how to begin creating conversations of explanation and understanding in situations where the brain will urge us to have a conversation of blame and excuses. I also explained WHY the brain wants us to make excuses.

In this article, I want to explain to you all how this concept of excuses and blame shows up in your personal development. Because blame and excuses does not just damage your relationships with other people. It damages your relationship with yourself as well. And this damage will halt personal development in its tracks.

How excuses and blame halt personal development, can show up in a way that most people do not even recognize. And this is why I felt it was so important to talk about this with my readers. I see so many people falling into this trap in their personal development, and social norms will tell them that they are “doing the right thing”. But the truth is, that this is a deeply programmed social belief that we keep handing down to generation after generation and creating this dysfunction in people’s ability to grow and evolve in their life.

This belief that I am talking about that we have all been programmed to follow, is this model of using shame, guilt, and blame for motivation to grow, or change. So many of us use it. We believe that we must feel bad enough about ourselves or our lives to make any change. If it does not feel bad enough, then do not change it, or just pile the “feel bad” on ourselves to create that discomfort to motivate change. (People are surprisingly good at this.)

Here is the issue though. In my last article I explained to you all how blame bypasses responsibility. I know that some of you are confused by that statement right there. And, this is because many of you may think that blame and responsibility are quite synonymous. But these two terms are so different, they may almost be opposites of each other.

You see, BLAME seeks to take all parts of an equation that led to a result and find parts (or one part) of the equation to be the part that is at fault and “must” change in order to get a new result out of the equation. And, while changing any one part of an equation will lead to a new result… By doing this we bypass the truth of responsibility.

This is because, with blame, we are also absolving certain parts of the equation from their role in creating the result that was previously created that we want to change. In doing this, we miss A HUGE CHUNK of the truth of how the result we are wanting to change, was created in the first place. If we do not know the entire story, then any change made is actually done in resistance to the truth, it is surface level, and the underlying cause of the old result still exists and will resurface later. It may resurface in a slightly re-heated, re-vamped, altered way… But it will be the same undesired result.

Responsibility is something entirely different. Responsibility is about seeing all parts of an equations role in an outcome to see the FULL truth of how an outcome was reached. Then all parts of the equation see how they CAN respond differently in the future to create a different result. Responsibility is about the ability to respond. It is not about blame, it is not about fault, it is not about seeking to absolve responsibility, it is not about seeking to diminish someone’s value or identity within the group (I talked about this fear in my last article). Responsibility seeks to see the WHOLE picture, reach understanding. Responsibility also opens up the ability for ALL parts of an equation to have OPPORTUNITY to learn, grow, and change the way they respond in the future to create a new result. This means equal distribution of responsibility to change.

What is great about responsibility is that so many more options are available to try for routes to a new result. With blame it is that one part of an equation is responsible for shouldering the weight of the change to create the new result. And the truth is, that a new result could be created in this way, but this will only be surface level, and temporary until ALL parts of the equation fully understand their role and responsibility in the result as well, and join in the journey to a new result.

So, how does this show up in personal development? Since this is what we want to talk about today; let me clear this up for you.

As a life coach, I work with many clients to create new behavior patterns in their lives so that they can change the results in their lives. But, unlike how most people are approaching their personal development by trying to hurry and change a behavior and therefore get a result so they can feel better… I do things differently. I want to create REAL and lasting change. By changing behavior, we have slipped into a model of blame here. And this is tricky to see.

REAL, lasting, authentic change occurs at the belief level and then moves out into action. If action is not being taken, then the belief is not there. So action will follow IF you change a belief. If action is not there, then the belief is not there. But also, just changing the action without changing the belief is not authentic, lasting, or real. Both beliefs AND action have responsibility here. But there are even more parts to the equation that have responsibility here. And we want to get the full picture to create REAL change. But before we see all pictures, here is a quick recap on why jumping into changing behaviors is not working for so many of you.

The reason why, is because (as I have written about before in my article on personal development) behaviors are not what makes a person WHO they are, or what kind of person they are. Many people change behaviors with this belief. They believe that if they alter their behavior then they can make others believe they are a different kind of person, and therefore change the type of person they are (and most believe this will make them feel better about themselves). The truth is so far from this though.

Behaviors are simply indicators of beliefs and thoughts that a person has about themselves, the world and others. So, if you change a behavior without changing belief, then the new behavior is being done in resistance to a belief. And, remember that beliefs create action. So, it is only a matter of time before the old belief starts creating action again, no matter how hard you resist it.

This is why so many people THINK that personal development is about resisting, restricting, and will-powering your way into change. It is not. It is actually a very loving, open, curious, exciting journey of freedom. Freedom from old beliefs that are not you, do not serve you, but that are keeping you trapped in behaviors that are creating results and a life that you do not want to be living in.

So, when I start working with my clients as a life coach, and I begin to show them the behaviors that they are exhibiting in their life that are giving them the results they do not want, and I try and show them how they are believing something that is causing them to act in this way, you would think that change just happens, right? But, it does not. (And this is why I would always recommend working with a coach to establish a relationship of love, responsibility, and compassion with yourself before going at personal development alone.)

What I see happening most of the time is that my clients slip into a dialogue of blame, guilt, and shame. They start saying things like,

“I am so stupid”
“I am so lazy”
“This just the kind of person that I am and I have to change that”
“There is something really wrong with me”

They begin speaking about themselves like this. And what is so interesting is that they believe that this is a noble thing to do. To “admit” how flawed, broken, and helpless they are to their flawed nature.

So many of us have been programmed to believe that this is how we take responsibility. And the primitive brain LOVES that we follow this model of responsibility. It loves it because it actually avoids responsibility all together. This model is about blame, and it bypasses seeing the truth.

The reason this bypasses the truth, is because our behaviors always have an explanation (not an excuse), and so do our beliefs. And when we slip into this way of thinking that is about shame and guilt, we start blaming. And I know that this might feel confusing to read. This IS blame. And there is a reason why we have been taught to do this and continue doing it. First, a little more background about the brain.

So, the brain has its two parts. The cerebral cortex, and the primitive part of the brain. The primitive part of the brain (as we talked about before) is simply trying to quickly, and with as little energy as possible, get you to survive. It does so through many programs that in today’s modern context, are quite outdated. They do not serve us. These programs tell us a few things. One is to avoid pain, and seek pleasure. One is to use as little energy as possible. Another is to always be on the lookout, because “something is wrong”. And this last one plays a huge role in why our brain uses this model of blame guilt and shame in our personal development.

You see, we are always on the lookout for something being wrong in life. Whether you realize it or not, you brain is urging you to do so in the background all of the time. But we are socially programmed to believe that making excuses and blaming other people is not so desirable. We do it anyway because the brain urges us to (we talked about this in part 1 of this article that I posted a week ago). The brain urges us to because it believes that responsibility is the same as blame and blame means a danger to our very survival. So, the brain will urge you to seek blame. But it will also urge you to not do so in a way that endangers your social position (because this could spell death according to its outdated programming).

What this means is that when we realize that there is not an easy scapegoat out there willing to take the blame if we pass it off onto them, or if we have run out of things to blame in life around us, then the brain has to find what is wrong somewhere else. It does this by turning inward and simply sending the message of “you are what is wrong”.

Now, this does not feel good. So, we believe that we are taking the hard road to change when our brain takes this path. We think that we have finally grown up and accepted responsibility by seeing that we are what is wrong. But, the issue is, this is still the model of using blame here. As I talked about in part 1 of this topic (my previous article), taking blame is also making excuses. It is not responsibility. Because taking blame is not distributing responsibility, it is not seeking understanding, it is simply seeking an easy solution to avoid seeing the total truth, and instead create a quick temporary change without it leading to real long lasting change.

Now, you might wonder why the brain urges us to do this. Why would the brain not want us to change. Especially if the brain is also urging us to find that something is wrong. Would it not want us to change then? The truth is NO. It does not want us to change.

You see, what creates behavior is beliefs. We cleared this up. The brain works to make these beliefs starting on the day we are born. It creates these beliefs because the brain desires certainty. It thinks that this allows it to predict and therefore stay alive. Because to the brain, dying is the worst thing. This is because the brain cannot go with us into death. And when we change; I mean REALLY change, death happens.

You might be thinking that I am being dramatic here. I get it. But, allow me to explain. The brain believes that if it cannot predict things then we are in danger of death. The brain cannot go into death, so it wants to avoid that. It does not want to go into death because there is has not way to be its identity as the brain. We call this identity the ego, that the brain takes on as it develops beliefs about life, the world, others and ourselves. The ego cannot go into death. What does this have to do with changing though?

So, when we change. If that change is real, and lifelong change, then this means that beliefs have changed. And here is what dies when we change. When we change, beliefs die, and new beliefs form. In the death of those beliefs, behaviors change and new ones form. And in this process, an identity also dies for the brain. And to the brain, the death of this identity is the same as the death of the body. The brain only KNOWS how to exist, how to keep us safe and BELIEVE it can predict life, within its current identity (with its current beliefs). So, when we look at beliefs and begin to question them, and possibly let them go to create new ones, the brain freaks out.

The brain does not actually want us to do this. So, for the brain, the easier thing to do, is to blame an identity that is has created for you. This identity tells you who you are, and what you are capable of, and where your limits are. It does this with beliefs about life, and therefore behaviors. And when we approach our personal development from this model of shame and guilt, what we do, is we begin to blame that identity.

It hurts, because we believe this identity is us. We believe we are doing the responsible thing to blame it and feel shame and guilt. But the truth is, that the brain is using this as a way to keep the ego alive. It is doing it to keep you attached to an identity that will keep you stuck in the same beliefs and same life that you do not want to be in, but the brain feels like it can predict life within that life. It would rather you feel the feelings of not wanting to be in that life, and urge you to seek short-term immediate pleasure and gratification within that life to sooth those emotions of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, resentment, hopelessness, etc… It would rather you do that where at least it has its identity and knows how to exist, than to step into looking at beliefs and realize that those beliefs are not facts.

You see, in personal development we have 2 places to shift blame, when we come from the model of guilt and shame. We can shift it to something in the world around us. When we do this we try to absolve ourselves of responsibility so that we do not feel guilt or shame. Then we keep our beliefs and behaviors the same, and just use temporary pleasure to get by in a life that is so hard, that we do not want to be in, but we have no way to change it or do anything about it. We can do that, or we shift it onto our “identity” (ourselves). When we do this, we also escape responsibility. We think that we are taking responsibility, but the truth is we are not. We are not looking at the beliefs we have and why we formed them, and therefore see our power in choosing those beliefs and creating them, acting on them to reinforce them, and therefore create the life we are in. Instead, when we shift the blame on ourselves in the form of our identity (by slapping a label on ourselves of some adjective to describe the kind of person we are for living this way), and when we do this, we bypass our power in having chosen to create life as it is for us (with our beliefs and therefore behaviors).

You see, real responsibility is about seeing the full story and having understanding for how and why we chose something. If we believe we are doing something because of an identity that we have, then we have no power. We just are that way, and the only way to change is to live in constant resistance to what we are. And this is why many of us believe that people never change. Because, change done in resistance to a false identity that we believe we have, will lead to us running out of willpower, and when we do, we believe there is this inevitable flawed identity there that we have to fall back into and let it take over us.

But this is again, simply the brain using us to convince us to stay in a life where its identity (the ego) exists, and it thinks it can predict life and keep us safe and alive, where it knows how to be. It does not matter if that life is a life that our higher self, knows we do not want to be living in. The brain fights, and urges us to stay stuck with that identity with the illusion of false certainty in that identity, so that we believe this is at least better than getting out there in the unknown and creating a new life. Because that new life would be uncertain. We would not know how to be in that life because our identity is ______________. And that identity is only capable of doing _______________.

I know this is deep.

I know this feels heavy here.

I want you all to see your power though. To see that we want to get down in this heaviness and find the real truth. Because the real truth is, that this brain that is running the show for you with its false certainty and identity. It is a brain that you (who you really are) were given to use. That brain created this reality you live in. You took part in that creation, but you were not aware of it before. So, you created a life from the mode of survival and unawareness. I want you to imagine what you could do with that same brain if you used the power it has to create an all new life with awareness, with authenticity, with intention, and with you using IT instead of it using you.

Think about it.

I want you to imagine that there is so much possibility out there. Some that your brain right now will not consider because you are not telling it to. But if you told it to, it would. The brain is urging you to not do this because it feels scary. Because… Well… Death of the ego identity, and no more certainty. Until you create new certainty.

What if you created that new certainty in a life you wanted to be in. Not just in some parts of it while just getting by in others. I mean what if you created a life in which you wanted to be in ALL parts of it, with excitement? And within that life you created beliefs and actions that supported the idea that in THIS NEW LIFE you also had certainty.

This is why so many people stop in their personal development. It is this part of growth right here. Stepping into uncertainty. Stepping into uncomfortable ON PURPOSE. Because to REALLY change and grow, we will shed beliefs away. When we do that, there will be a raw area of uncertainty there. The brain is going to do the equivalent of dropping nuclear bombs to try and scare you into running back to the old beliefs for that “certainty” it keeps trying to tell you that you have with the old beliefs. And most people believe this fear and run back.

The truth is that this certainty does not actually exist in the old beliefs. It is an illusion. The COVID pandemic proved that to all of us. Things we thought were certain suddenly were not certain. But the truth was that they were never certain in the first place. We just all had beliefs that made it FEEL like we had certainty.

So, if we see that certainty is merely an illusion, then we actually have a really cool opportunity that so many are missing out on taking. You feel stuck in a life you do not want because of beliefs that keep you acting in a way that creates that life. You keep those beliefs because of an illusion of certainty. If that certainty is not real, it is just a feeling. If those beliefs are not facts, they are ideas you held onto from an early age when you were fighting to learn how to survive and live in this life. Then, you have a massive opportunity to see you power for REAL change.

Not by blaming yourself for why you are where you are in life, and trying to change who you are by changing behaviors. You have the opportunity for change the REAL way. By stopping, examining the truth of your beliefs, and your power in creating them, and seeing your responsibility in being able to use your brain to create new beliefs (even as the brain kicks and screams). You can do this with openness, curiosity, compassion, love, and excitement. And what is awesome about this, is that it is not about resisting an identity, and using willpower anymore. It is about shedding away false layers and becoming free to find who you REALLY are, and what you are TRULY capable of once you let go of the limiting identity and beliefs that keep you where you are now in life.

My friends blame in personal development is real, and really dangerous. It is tricky, and sneaky. I tell people to work with a coach for a reason. A coach will help you see those blind-spots the brain is going to try to use to keep you from seeing the full picture and therefore your power to change. It does this because it believes it is protecting you, and it will do so with THE MOST fierceness. A coach is going to help you see where your brain is doing this, and where you might be following it, instead of owning your power to create REAL change in your life unstoppably.

It is time that we shed away this model of shame, guilt, and blame. It harms our relationships with others, and most importantly it harms our ability to know ourselves and truly grow in this life. It is time that we start having more inner dialogue about understanding and explanation when we approach our personal development. Let go of the inner dialogue of blame and excuses (by blaming an identity that is not you).

I want to see you all own your power in this life. I want to see more people creating lives they WANT to be in. I want to see fewer people just trying to get by in lives they feel stuck in. It is time to RISE & THRIVE my friends. You cannot achieve this by blaming yourself.