Or it might be, anyway.

I love hearing all the various and sundry excuses that roll around out there for why something doesn’t or can’t work for your business.

You’re in B2B. You’re in B2C. You’re a non-profit. You don’t have enough time. You have a limited budget. You can’t measure it. You don’t know how to track it. You don’t have any case studies. Twitter is stupid.  Blogging is time consuming. Getting buy-in is hard. You don’t have any fans or comments or conversions. Yeah, but that person has it easy because they have more, better, different, whatever or they’re <insert notable name here> so everything is easy for them.

The difference between those who make progress and those who don’t is often the number of excuses they’re willing to make – and accept. We all have obstacles in our way, and things that make our jobs hard. But the ones who succeed are the ones constantly trying to figure out the way over, up, or around them.

Sometimes, doing that well means taking a very sobering, hard look at what you’re doing, right square in the mirror. Are you really doing everything you can? Or are you consistently pointing the finger at external circumstances, throwing your hands up in exasperation, and figuring that your stagnation is just because the people around you don’t “get” you?

If your sales are down, it might be time to stop blaming the economy and start looking at the holes in your product offering, or the shortcomings of your customer service. If you aren’t getting traction for your social media efforts, perhaps you’re not serving things up in a way that makes people want to interact with you. Maybe your blog just really isn’t all that well written, or is full of sales pitches galore that turn away traffic.

If you’re struggling with budgets and staffing, it might be time to buckle down and do the work to make a solid business case for changing one or the other of those, or both. Or looking at your existing plans with a fine tooth comb, trimming the fat, and figuring out what’s not working so you can divert resources to other places.

If you don’t have enough time to do the things that matter, perhaps you need to reevaluate your priorities. And sometimes, you just have to work your tail off to get it all done.

There are success stories all around you. The people at the front of them have worked hard to create them. Most likely, they’ve had to make significant commitments and sacrifices to achieve that success, and they’ve worked their way around lots of roadblocks to get there. But I can guarantee you the one thing they haven’t served up is a pile of excuses for why they can’t do it.

I catch myself every day, telling myself why something might not work. In some ways, it makes me really good at my job, because I can spot the potential snags before they happen. Sometimes, it’s not so easy, like overcoming my insecurities about being a beginner yoga person and sticking with it anyway even when I hate how hard it is.

So next time you’re tempted to get wrapped around the axle about what’s standing in your way, stop. Breathe. Ask yourself what commitment you are making to yourself and your goals. And realize that you’re in the driver’s seat in many more ways than you might think.

image by alancleaver_2000

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