Excusitis

Ten years ago, my mother wished to see her cousin whom we had no information about other than that he lived in Pune. It took just a few minutes with the telephone directory and a dozen calls to trace him down and meet him.

 It is common to hear excuses for not having called or visited due to the lack of knowledge about telephone numbers and addresses. In today’s age of information explosion, such excuses are most bizarre and are symptomatic of an ailment called excusitis.

 The word has been taken from the book: The Magic of Thinking Big, written by David Schwartz. Chapter Two is titled ‘Cure Yourself of Excusitis, the Failure Disease’. The term refers to the behaviour that finds all sorts of excuses to justify lack of action.

 So often we come up with unoriginal justifications for the unjustifiable. The person seized by excusitis not only wrongly believes that his stance appears logical, but also tends to be gripped by recurring excusitis in other situations as well!

 If somebody speaks of lack of time, it means one of two things... the person does not know how to or does not want to and is being unabashedly untruthful! Effectively it is a skill thing in the first case and an attitude thing in the latter.

 Excusitis blinds us from our own abilities and makes us shirk responsibility. Every time, an excuse arises in our mind, let’s opt to take charge of our choices, our actions or the lack of them! Escaping excusitis leads to embracing ownership of our lives and our true potential!

 Let’s opt for ownership of every action...

Instead of excusitis as a regular reaction!

 - Pravin K. Sabnis