No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy Read Free Book Online Page A

was the main character, as in a play.
     
    It was like a flashbulb going off in my face. I looked at myself and around me at my small apartment, and I considered the fact that I had not graduated from high school. The only work that I was qualified to do was manual labor. I earned just enough money to pay my basic expenses, and I had very little left over at the end of each month.
     
    I suddenly knew that unless I changed, nothing else was going to change. No one else was going to do it for me. In reality, no one else cared. I realized at that moment that, from that day forward I was completely responsible for my life and for everything that happened to me. I was responsible. I could no longer blame my situation on my difficult childhood or mistakes I had made in the past. I was in charge. I was in the driver’s seat. This was my life, and if I didn’t do something to change it, it would go on like this indefinitely, by the simple force of inertia.
     
    This revelation changed my life. I was never the same again. From that moment on, I accepted more and more responsibility for everything in my life. I accepted responsibility for doing my job better than before rather than doing only the minimum that was necessary to avoid getting fired. I accepted responsibility for my finances, my health, and, especially, my future.
     
    The very next day, I went down to a local bookstore at my lunch break and began the lifelong practice of buying books with information, ideas, and lessons that could help me. I dedicated my life to self-improvement, to continuous learning in every way possible.
     
    For the rest of my business life, right up to the present moment, whenever I’ve wanted or needed to learn something to help me, I have returned to learning, to reading, to listening to audio programs and attending courses and seminars. I found that you could learn anything you need to learn in order to accomplish any goal you set for yourself.
     
    Over time, I learned that fully 80 percent of the population never accepts complete responsibility for their lives. They continually complain, criticize, make excuses, and blame other people for things in their lives about which they are not happy. The consequences of this way of thinking, however, can be disastrous. They can sabotage all hopes for success and happiness later in life.
     
     

From Childhood to Maturity
     
    When you are growing up, from an early age you become conditioned to see yourself as not responsible for your life. This is normal and natural. When you are a child, your parents are in charge. They make all your decisions. They decide what food you will eat, what clothes you will wear, what toys you will play with, what home you will live in, what school you will attend, and what activities you will engage in during your spare time. Because you are young, innocent, and unknowing, you do what they want you to do. You have little choice or control.
     
    As you grow up, however, you begin to make more and more of your own decisions in each of these areas. But because of your early programming, you are conditioned unconsciously to feel that someone else is still responsible for your life, that there is still someone else out there who can or should take care of you.
     
    Most people grow up believing that if something goes wrong, someone else is responsible. Someone else is to blame. Someone else is guilty. Someone else is the villain and they are the victim. As a result, most people make more and more excuses for the things in their lives, past and present, that make them unhappy.
     

Get Over the Mistakes Your Parents Made
     
    If your parents criticized you or got angry with you for mistakes you made when you were growing up, you began to unconsciously assume that somehow you were at fault. If your parents punished you physically or emotionally for doing or not doing something that pleased or displeased them, you felt inferior and inadequate.
     
    When your parents withheld