Taffer - Dont bullsh*t yourself!: crush the excuses that are holding you back

I DONT EMBRACE EXCUSES,

I EMBRACE SOLUTIONS

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

John D. Rockefeller, American oil magnate

The worst excuse I have made in my life haunts me to this day. When my mother died in July 2012, we were together and had had no unresolved issues for many years. However, there was a five-year period when we didnt speak. What precipitated that silence was an argument about something so trivial that I cant even remember what it was. For five years I made excuses about why I couldntor wouldntcall her. Yvette Taffer was old-schoolshe would stand on ceremony so that it was up to me, her son, to make the first move. And I didnt want to do it. I was stubborn, but really I had no courage. I created meaningless excuses like Its the principle of the thing, or I wont compromise my dignity. I was just bullshitting myself. What a waste of time, energy, resources, and love! We all have to stop bullshitting ourselves.

Fortunately, I came to my senses, albeit five years too late. One day my brother, Lewis, and I were talking about an upcoming family event that my mom would be attending. As we talked, something in me just clicked. I finally realized what a jerk I had been all those years. Right then I picked up the phone and called my mother, apologizing profusely and feeling like a fool for wasting years we could have spent together. Waiting those five years to make that call is one of my biggest regrets.

The time we lose to excuses is devastating. No one loved me more than my mother did. The woman who gave birth to me, nurtured me, protected me, and fed and clothed meno argument is worth abandoning that person. Listen to me: Excuses hurt, they leave wounds and can scar. They are your enemy. They steal the future and can destroy you. Not calling my mother wasted precious time. Time, as you will learn in this book, is the most powerful thing we have. When we do not use it correctly, as was the case with my mother, it can hurt us for years.

I have witnessed the destruction excuses wreak every day. As a business professional for more than three decades, I have been in the unique and privileged position to see firsthand what excuses do to people. Long before Bar Rescue became a television phenomenon, I was helping to fix broken businesses and owners. The root cause of all the problems I saw were excuses. I can walk into any unsuccessful business or talk to a person who has been unable to fulfill a single dream and see the results of a series of poor decisions that got them to a bad place. The stench of failure hangs in the air like stale cigar smoke. Talk to the people behind the failures, and you often find that they are overachievers at explaining disappointment away with what they think are logical reasons. They are masters of bullshitting themselves. Ive heard every outlandish and hackneyed excuse in the bookfrom I have no time to check my company books to I cant make my business in New Jersey a success because taxes are too high, or Theres turmoil in the Middle East and Ukraine, so I just cant think about trying to succeed to My cat died. Come on!

Excuse makers seem to put more time into crafting the perfect justification for their actions (or inactions) than into working and succeeding. But lets be realits not just owners of struggling bars who make excuses. We all do. And its time for us to stop. In the short term, an excuse seems like an easy fix. Its anything but. Psychologists call excuse making rationalization, a defense mechanism we use to justify bad behavior and poor decisions. While the excuses seem perfectly rational to the excuse maker, everyone else is rolling their eyes. Excuse making is just a form of lying. When you make an excuse youre holding yourself back! Why would you do that? Dont Bullsh*t Yourself teaches you how to identify and face those lies head-on, and turn them around into positive action.

Excuses are the common denominator of failure.

In my experience, they fall into six major categories, which we will go through in this book together to bust each one: fear, knowledge, time, circumstances, ego, and scarcity. I chose these six because they have come up repeatedly during my thirty years of working with failing businesses, failing owners, and failing people, and when facing my own excuses that had the potential to derail me. Each chapter centers on one of these types of excuses, revealing its facets and manifestations. You might notice some overlapping themes. Thats because the emotions that underpin excusesunhappiness, frustration, and discontentcause the excuses to feed on each other. Were going to break that up.

Im here to help. Ive seen the power of people confronting their own excuses and turning their businesses and lives around, including my own. From people who defied the odds, resisting the temptation to make excuses, to those who struggled with excuse making and were not able to resist the temptation, well explore their instructive and inspiring stories in the pages to come. So dont shy away; its time to grab this book and identify your own excuse-making bad habits, and then lets work together to change them with actionable steps. My goal with Dont Bullsh*t Yourself is for you to become accountable every single day for every decision you make and action you take.

Your excuses are lies, illusions, delusions, traps, and mirages; they are all holes we digand then jump right into. I reject excuses and embrace solutions. When Im done with you, you will too.