I finally had the revelation that I wasn’t exercising regularly because I had too many reasons not to.
“You’re too busy”
“You have important things to do”
“You’re tired”
“You had a late night”

Reasons are things we like more than results…

I had an intern one time who couldn’t quite seem to learn anything, but made up for it by being extremely stubborn and opinionated. I finally asked him what his reason was for wanting to work for me and he replied “To make YOU better”

Ahhhh. Missing some key ingredients there… Actually missing all the key ingredients there. His mission was apparently to make me like God’s-gift-to-everyone IE himself?

I’m not going to tell you what I said in response and leave it to your imagination, but this is the same young man who at one point had a dream of becoming the consultant that walks into your home and tells you everything wrong with it because he was “really good at it”. Like he actually offered to do it for some friends of ours in hopes of hearing “Wow! We never thought of all these things! Mow the lawn? Genius! Fix the crack in the wall? Amazing! Thank you so much and here’s a huge cheque for your time!”

My old neighbour said she tried to hire him to do a job in her yard that he’d never done before in his life, but that his price was outrageous and he didn’t seem to actually listen when she was speaking. I asked him how he priced the job and his response was “I googled it”.
“Googled what?” I had the nerve to ask. “Googled the price for a top professional to do that job” he said.

“Are YOU a top professional?” I asked.
“No, I’ve never done it before”
“Then why do you suppose she’d hire someone with NO skill for the same price as someone with ALL the skill?” I said.
“Because I’m confident in my ability” he said.
“????????????” I said.

This is the part where I started talking to him like he was five instead of twenty…
“Why don’t you do it for half the labour price?”
“Because the Internet said it was worth ____” He said.
“Does the Internet also say that half of any dollars is more than zero dollars?”
“She can take it or leave it” he said.
“Did she leave it?” I said.
“Yes she did”

As amusing as the encounter was for the rest of us, I’ve had some time to come to a conclusion about why he was so…. Like that.

He had reasons.

He had reasons for every one of his ridiculous decisions, and his reasons were more important to him than his results.

Reasons are just excuses all dressed up I think. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can treat it like a person, but it’s still a pig. You can make friends with it, but it’s still a pig.

He was addicted to his reasons, but I wonder what would have happened if he would have been honest and said he was actually addicted to failure? This is always a difficult conclusion to arrive to, but at least it’s honest and aware.

I was leading a Team Meeting and said something that shocked everyone: “Until we learn to HATE the reasons we have that make us fail, we will always accept failure!”

Having made my point I think it would be allowed to ask how my daily exercise is going?

Mostly good, except for days like today when I’m too busy or important to get on my treadmill until after writing my blog…

Wait..
Let me just stuff my reasons in the garbage and head downstairs…