Responsibilities in a notebook

What Responsibilities Are You Using As An Excuse?

Before I start with this topic, let me assure you that I am very guilty of doing this myself and this post comes from the last 2 years of me making tough choices to completely change the course of my life. I put it off for far longer than I should have because there were things I had to “take care of first”. Sometimes that’s true. Most of the time it’s not. In my case, it mostly wasn’t true.

“The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, ‘I’ve got
responsibilities.”

-Richard Bach

So, How Are You Holding Yourself Back?

While this applies to literally every aspect of your life, I’m going to tie it to just your health. Do you know you need to eat better, move more, or stretch more often? Are you always putting these things off for something else that is “more important”? There are things in life that just have to get done, right? And more often than not, these aren’t things that are good for us.

When I say things that are good for us, I really mean things that we need to be healthy, happy, and whole beings. And usually, these are the first things we compromise when we get busy. Things like eating out instead of cooking, staying up later and getting up earlier instead of resting, or just straight out skipping workouts.

I get it. There are only so many hours in the day. The truth is, most of us have the time to do the things we need to keep ourselves healthy. However, we choose not to because we place other things ahead on our list of priorities. Here’s the funny thing about life. You can work all day every day from the second you’re born until the second you die and when you die there will still be a never-ending list of things you “have to do” left over.

Take Responsibility For Your Own Health

The only way you will build or maintain a healthy lifestyle is if you take responsibility for it and make it a priority. Yes, it means you will have to make more hard choices and exercise more willpower. But that is how you create the healthy lifestyle you want. If you do what every one else does, you will have the lifestyle that everyone else does.

We want to have our cake an eat it to. We don’t want to give anything up to get what we really want. Instead of saying, “I can’t because”, say, “how can I?” Saying I can’t is focusing on the problem. It won’t yield solutions because you’ve mentally made it impossible. You’ve literally told yourself it’s impossible.

But saying, “how can I” immediately places you into a problem-solving mindset. You can’t even say it without coming up with ideas. Even if they’re way out in left field, it’s better than believing a solution doesn’t exist. How can you get 60 minutes of novel movement a day? How can you prepare your own food? How can you spend more time outside? The answers are there just take responsibility for your life and create the solutions! If it’s important to you, you will make it happen.

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