Michael Kithcart on Eliminating Excuses

Season 2, Episode 7

Summary:

Have you ever had to sit down and have a tough conversation with yourself? Something along the lines of get your shit together and make it happen? Yeah, me, too. I found myself on my own receiving end the other week and walked myself through a framework of eliminating excuses. As in take 100% responsibility for everything – my actions, thoughts, beliefs, outcomes. It was actually liberating so on today’s episode of Champions of RISK, I’m sharing the framework I use to remove the fear and indecisiveness that show up as excuses. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did – really!

Links:

Champion YOU Group Coaching

Transcript:

Michael Kithcart: 0:00

Hello, I'm Michael Kithcart.

I'm a high performance business coach and entrepreneur who helps move stressed out leaders and high achievers from stuck to unstoppable.

Welcome to the Champions of RISK podcast where we examine the many aspects of risks.

So we can all face uncertainty with more strength, courage and humor together.

Have you ever had to sit down and have a tough conversation with yourself?

I mean, like, really do a reality check something along the lines of like, hey, Mike, get your shit together. Let's go, what the heck is happening here?

Yeah, that's exactly the conversation that I had to have with myself this last week. I mean, I don't know if it's the weather. I don't know if I really don't know what it is.

And quite frankly, it doesn't matter. I just know that I was getting super annoyed with myself.

And I'm just, you know, like, wondering, Has that ever happened to you? chances are it has because I recognize that I work with my clients on some of this. It's like I had to do my own coaching session on myself.

So I just have to say like, there were a number of things that were going on. And I just kind of had to identify these excuse behaviors that I noticed that I was performing. It was like, I sort of became aware of it. I recognized that I was doing it. But I wasn't yet fully aware.

Does that make any sense? Let me see if any of these things have ever happened to you. All of these things. I recognized eventually, that I was doing, and they're just excuses.

So I was trying to figure everything out. All of a sudden, it was like, I need to redo my grand master plan. I needed to have like, rethink my strategy.

I needed to have a strategy session, I needed a new diagram on what my business model looked like. Yeah, right. I really don't.

You don't either.

I noticed that I, all of a sudden, I decided that I knew I needed to learn something new. So I pulled out this course that I had bought like four months ago and hadn't gone through. Because I decided that this was exactly the week that I needed to figure out what my struggling avatar look like. Like, right right now that it, it was different. It it changed. And I needed to go through some step by step course to be able to figure that and a bunch of other things out, which by the way, just really took a lot of time.

And the other thing that I noticed is that I just kept telling myself how tired I was, it was like this fatigue was setting in, I wanted to just take a nap. But then I was telling myself, that's just being lazy.

So instead, I spent like an hour scrolling through social media, telling myself like, I'm just gonna see what other people are doing, how they're marketing themselves. Yeah, let's just say that just made me more tired. I hadn't taken a nap, I was less refreshed, nothing was getting done. I was having temper tantrums.

And for any of you that may know me, I like I can have some spectacular temper tantrums.

I think like my life's work of doing personal and professional development is a result of so I would have fewer tantrums, but I was having them last week, you know, some things fell through the cracks. I'm going through working with some new people.

And really like I knew, I know, logically, I can only blame myself.

But I still was getting so irritated that things weren't getting done. And it felt like I just can't keep doing this all by myself, poor me poor me.

I recognize that I kept saying, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know how to do this. I don't know what the answer is. So therefore I did what like absolutely nothing.

It was just like, ridiculous stuff. I think like I reverted back to my 12 year old self. I don't know what to say to that person.

I don't know why they would want to be on my podcast. It was just like all this self doubt was emerging in like really, like juvenile ways, I think is the only way I can express it. And therefore I was being lazy. And when I really just boil it down.

Like when I noticed for me that I am saying I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I really am just being lazy. I'm not figuring out like a valid business reason to have a business development call. I Just not focusing down on something, taking 15 minutes and just outlining it.

The reality is we know way more than we think that we do.

And so I'll just say for me, when I noticed that I'm starting to say, I don't know a lot, it's just an excuse not to get some shit done really seriously. And my favorite, most frustrating, most humbling excuse of the week is I am just too busy to work out.

Which, you know, I don't know about you.

But I know like, if I'm not working out, it's just making me feel more tired. It's making me feel worse about myself, it's creating more self doubt, I just like perpetuated.

This whole week, again, I even just reliving it for you here on this podcast is like totally annoying the crap out of me. Now, luckily, I have tools and resources and know that there are ways to get out of that vicious excuse cycle, because really, it's just fear getting in the way.

That's just what a signal is, to me. Like when all these excuses pop up, it doesn't even really matter what it is that one might fear. Because the reality is, is that it's just probably not even true.

The things that we make up in our head to think about why we can't do something or why now is not the right time. It's just a whole big old book of fiction most of the time.

So there is power that can be gained and tapped into by just stopping for a moment and accepting that we are all 100% responsible for our lives.

So that's what I had to do for myself.

First of all, like, Mike, you are 100% responsible for everything in your life. So suck it up, Buttercup, and let's get back to business.

This is the framework that I use, I'm sharing it with you in case it is helpful to you in any way it is helpful to me, when I roll it out to clients, it's helpful for them.

So there's some value in here. And I'm just going to walk you through it because it put me back on track faster than you know, just wallowing in it and trying to figure it out from a place of excuse.

So here is like the framework that I use to eliminate excuses. And one is that first piece of just recognize that you're in it, it happens to all of us. It had been a little while I'm not gonna lie. And so I think that just added to my annoyance, like really now, it's February What the heck, but you just kind of got to recognize it and stop the judging and just move on recommit. Like I know what I needed to be doing to grow my business.

I know how I need to show up for my clients.

So it's just a recommitment of why I do what I do. Same for you like, recommit to the goal here, then here's what else I did to eliminate my excuses. I call them reconnaissance. Like I reached out to my accountability partners. There are a couple f people in my life, y significant other being one f them.

Paula does my dear frie d, other great girlfriends too, ut like people who just call ou out on your shit and just say hey, even start if you get them on a zoom call, like they tart getting that smirk on heir face. This is what Polly d d to me like, Yeah, kind of shoo her head.

Yeah.

Get on wit it, would you like that's wha she was saying to me, she d dn't even need to say it. She just needed to give me that look you know, so I call th m my reconnaissance g t my accountability partners to kind of help me pull my head o t of my butt.

And then I went back to breaking it down. Okay, maybe there are days where you just realize that you don't have a ton of energy, that fatigue piece, I will say in my excuse mode was actually real. I think I've slept like the last four nights more than I have.

I don't know, like in the last six months, it feels like but I wake up and it's like, okay, here's one big thing I absolutely have to get done. Maybe it's those three things. And I just eliminate the excuses and I make sure those things get done. And if that's it for the day, at least I got that done.

And then I just go to it. Like do it. Here's the thing. Like sometimes we just want to feel better before we actually do it. But the reality is, in order to feel better, we have to do first.

We have to do before we feel. Yeah, I had to have remind myself of that and just start Doing it.

And happy to report, immediately started feeling better because I was being productive. I was building momentum. And here's the other thing I did, I started ignoring things like interrupting phone calls. I don't know about you, but if your significant other spouse, kids, you know, are still at home and just, I re establish some boundaries, like do not interrupt me during the day.

I ignored social.

God, dang it, you hear it.

But sometimes we just have to be reminded that comparing self to others, it just gets in the way.

And I fell victim to it myself.

And so yeah, stop, just start ignoring and then make a decision to feel better. I was like, wow, I'm so annoyed with myself because I'm complaining. I don't want to be a complainer.

So I decided no complaining, I am just going to be happy. I'm just deciding to be happy.

Because you know what, I have a great flippin life. I really do. And chances are you do two things are better than we may be thinking that they are right now.

So it really does boil down to just taking 100% responsibility for everything like I recommitted to being responsible for my actions, my thoughts, my beliefs, my outcomes, if I'm not getting the outcomes that I want, what is it that I'm going to commit to doing differently, or consistently until I get there?

It may sound simple, it doesn't have to be over complicated.

That's the other thing. Like, let's just not overcomplicate our lives, let's make it a little bit easier topic of one of my past podcasts my word for the year, but I just have to I wanted to share this with you because it was so liberating. I mean, I'm laughing at myself now.

At just kind of how pathetic I was in the last week.

And also kind of like joyous and how easy it was to turn around. And I'm going to leave you with a couple of mantras that got me back to that deciding to just feel better, and just start doing it until I felt better.

And that is, it's 100% possible 100% of the time. I mean, like truly everything that anything that we are struggling with or annoyed with or just want to be different, there is a solution for it. So instead of complaining about it, I know I keep saying that.

But it's like I really was I was complaining, I stopped and asked myself, how might that be possible? how might that make sense? how might that just be the best flippin idea I've ever had.

But again, it comes back to that 100% possible 100% of the time. And if it's up to me, it's meant to be.

I have more power than I was thinking I can make a lot of stuff happen.

And you can do it. This is a total ripoff of Brendon Burchard. I learned it in his HPX Live event that I was at last February. So no time like, one year later, pulling it back out again.

I say it with my stepdaughter. But I just want to say I'm ready. It's my time showing up strong.

Stand up, Say that three times really loud and tell me that you don't already start to feel better. Life doesn't happen to you. It happens for you. And eliminating the excuses reminded me of that.

So I hope my trials and tribulations over the last couple of weeks and what I did about it can help you let me know what excuses you've been tackling later. And if my framework for eliminating those excuses helped you. Have a great day.

See you next time. I just want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Champions of RISK podcast. If one of your goals is a commitment to personal and professional development this year, please check out Champion You Group Coaching.

There's an amazing group of people in this monthly gathering.

There are other professionals that are just like you meet virtually to learn new high performance topics that support our goals that help us propel us to move forward.

I mean we pack in training small group discussion and coaching all in an hour. It's an investment in you and we make that our count each and every month.

Discover for yourself how Champion You Group Coaching can support you in achieving your own version of an unstoppable 2021.

This is the last few weeks that you can sign up for the introductory offer, the pricing is going to go up March 1.

So check it out on my website and michaelwkithcart.com, get yourself signed up today, there's basically a no risk option in there for you.

The link is also in the show notes and I can't wait to see you. In the March session of Champion You Group Coaching. We're going to talk about productivity.