Excuses, Excuses! (Or, Dust off that dirt and GROW!!)

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Valerie Consoli, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

We’ve all gone through so much in our lives. Some of us more than others. So why do some people turn out one way, and others turn out another way?

For example, a child who grows up in poverty, or abuse, but grows up to be a shining healing example to others. A child who grows up with everything given to them, but grows up to be an angry hurtful adult. Wouldn’t it make sense for it to be the other way around? With children many times it has a lot to do with their temperament, if you ask me, I will generally say it has to do with their soul energy. However, that’s another article! It’s not this one.

Even as adults, we use our situation, or what we have gone through as excuses for bad behavior, or for not doing things we have responsibility to do. Don’t use your story as an excuse, or a cop out. Make a better choice than that.

Tough times are a challenge. They challenge us for a reason. We are challenged to grow, to learn how to heal ourselves and others, we are forced to look inside and find our strength, to find the truth of who we are. Tough times do not happen so that we can use them as an excuse to act badly. Stress is not an excuse to be horrible to the guy next to you in a car, even if he is driving hideously and cut you off and just missed your bumper. You don’t know what he is going through at this moment.

See the bad times, the tough times as a gift. Because believe it or not they are. I’m not saying this because I am one of those fortunate people who have had it easy, I’m the exact opposite. I spent many years cursing the bad hand I had been dealt. Why are things never the way they should be in my life? Why do I have no family? Why was everyone taken away from me so young? Why did I have to grow up under the conditions I grew up under? I’ve been there. That’s why I can say this with all honesty.

Don’t let them define you. Don’t use them as an excuse to walk around with a dark cloud over your head. You don’t get to be Eeyore 24/7 just because you have had it so bad. These things happened in your life to make you stronger! To take the little seed of light inside you and make it grow and bloom into a bright shining flower! When a seed is planted, it is so hard for that little plant to break through the shell of the seed, to break through all that dirt planted over it, and maybe even some weeds growing nearby with a whole LOT of roots just trying to suffocate that little seedling! Does it stay under the dirt and inside its shell griping and groaning? No!!! It fights its way out of that shell, and just when it thinks it is free it finds that it still has all this dirt to get through. Once it has mustered the strength to get through the dirt, along the way it encounters all those roots! Making it even more difficult! But that little energy of a plant keeps going. It knows that there is a light waiting for it once it gets through that. It knows that once it makes it (and it will make it, we all make it), it is going to be embraced by that amazing light and amazing energy just on the other side of the dirt and roots and one it reaches that, still covered in dirt, it is going to start to blossom and bloom into a beautiful miracle of a flower.

Our lives are no different. We are here to show we are strong enough to fight through our own self created shells, and we are strong enough to fight through the dirt to get to the light we know is ours, and yes, we can even get through those stubborn roots! They think they can stop us! But they can’t!!! Every horrible thing that has ever happened to you, every setback, every loss, every time you have gotten up to be kicked back down from life, is a challenge to us to bloom. It is our path. Excuses won’t make them go away, giving into them won’t make them go away. Sitting under the dirt and roots in your shell, and choosing not to grow into your beautiful amazing self, only hurts you.

Let go of the excuses, stop allowing your story to define you. Break out of that shell of gloom and doom (Tigger! Not Eeyore!!!), you are so much stronger than that shell, all that dirt you are buried under, and the roots too. Let the world have the gift of your beautiful blooming self. Shine your light bright! The more you have gone through, I believe, the brighter your light will shine.