Are Your Problems Excuses or Motivation?

Day 38 – Crappy things happen to most of us. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to use your problems as an excuse or as fuel?

I find that there are two kinds of people in the world:

Those who use their problems as an excuse to fail and to be lazy.

And those who use their problems as fuel and motivation to do great things.

Some people are born into bad situations. They come from poverty or split families or abuse. Many of those people use their situation as an excuse to never do anything exceptional, but some demand better and use their situation as fuel in their motivational engine.

Some people are born with bodies that make them prone to weight gain. Many of those people use that as an excuse to be fat, but some use that as motivation to work out.

Helen Keller once wrote, “All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.”

I see so many people around me using their problems as an excuse and it keeps me up at night. Many people are facing tough times right now and suffering during this tough economy. It seems to me that our nation is depressed. Maybe that’s why they call it a depression. While economists say that we are in a recession and not a depression, that’s not true for the American public. People need to wake up and use our current problems as motivation to do great things.

Our nation was exceptional and is exceptional, and each of us has the opportunity to be exceptional. You can come from pure evil and still do amazing things. You can come from parents addicted to drugs who beat the crap out of each other instead of working, and you can still break out and be exceptional.

Look at your problems not as excuses, but as gasoline in your engine. Many people run as fast as they can to problems, but some run as fast as they can away from problems. Be the person who uses problems as motivation.