Excuses, everyone’s got one! But how often do you make your excuses before you fail? As an Irish person it’s difficult to put yourself out there. Open confidence is not something that’s respected by the majority of Irish people. “What a prick” attitude is common towards people that want to get on in life in an open confident way. In contrast, quiet confidence is well respected. Being the guy who said nothing about it and achieved something big is held in far higher esteem than being the guy who said he was going to do it and did it! Conor McGregor confidence appears to be changing this but dare I say it, only in Dublin 🤷♂️
Another big factor is how Irish people have a tendency to pigeonhole people into a certain role, he’s the hurler, she’s the academic, he’s into X, she’s into Y. You get known for things so easily and they stick. Even from your own parents; in my case I think I’m pigeonholed as the nerd, the academic who does something techy related. Can’t play sport as well as my siblings, can’t do mechanics or anything manual, can’t do anything except that job thing…
Despite the perception I have brought more cups into the house (as the team captain in multiple codes) than any of my siblings and definitely more county medals, though I see some challenges to this over Christmas. And extremely recently, my father spat out his soup at the thought of me towing a car (which I did), despite my inability for anything manual or mechanic I’ve previously received awards for engineering – the fucking best engineer in the school 😂 Anyway back to the point, when you’re known for something, it can become more difficult to put yourself out there as something else.
This pigeonholing, coupled with the quiet approach attitude leads to an attitude of making excuses first. People play everything down in case of failure even to the point of making sure others know the excuses for why you lost before you even lost. The alternative is scary at first –
“I’m going to win this thing, fuck you”.
It’s not a popular attitude if you express it outward but who actually really does it? At times it’s for sure what you say inside but outside you say something like
“Na not sure now today, X is good, and my prep wasn’t exactly great but hopefully I will”
To go to a pre match/event dressing room for a minute, have you ever said in your mind the things you say to people that ask?
No, I know which one of the above phrases I say to myself over and over!
You have to believe you can win, fully believe it. When you let an excuse into your mind before the event you are setting yourself to fail!
Make your excuses later, look back on failure (or victory) with an open mind, look at what you could do differently and improve. When you blame everything on a pre-defined excuse, you miss other things that you did wrong and it takes you much much longer to learn and improve!
FacelessFitness
FacelessFitGuy
Faceless Fitness 