I saw this quote the other day and it has been rattling around in my head ever sense. “Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.” This rings so true in everything. I have been working really hard on making sure that I am not making excuses for myself but it’s a lot easier to see others making excuses then looking in the mirror and finding my own. This year seems to have given everyone a lot of excuses that we could run too. Lot’s of events that I was planning on going to have been canceled, the cattle market has had a very rocky year and the list could go on forever but you know what? Those excuses don’t help me get to my goals any quicker instead they actually hold me back further then what facing up to them and coming up with a new plan and moving on.
My horse shoer always talks about how he doesn’t want to hear about how you can’t do something he wants to hear about ideas of how you are going to solve a problem because when you say you can’t you are right but if you think about it, you can generally come up with a solution. That might be calling in someone for help, using a lever to lift something heavy or whatever creative workaround you might find. When you give an excuse you stop progress completely instead of taking a pause.
Being a ranch wife I am faced with so many things that I am not capable of doing the traditional way and I can make a ton of excuses but in the end they don’t help I still have to get the job done. The other day my husband and I needed to doctor a cow, he roped her a little deep and so she was going a little faster then what I am use to. I caught but tried to cheat it since I was behind and like the old saying goes cheaters never win and ended with a big old miss and burn on my thumb. I wanted to throw my sucker in the dirt and go back home so bad and cry about my hurt hand I sure didn’t want to try and rope again swinging the rope hurt. But giving up was not an option, Corey had the cow roped, she needed doctoring and I was the only one around to help. I signed up for this after all time to be a cowgirl. I had a valid excuse, I mean my thumb did hurt and I had missed and was discouraged but I took a deep breath reminded myself that you can do anything for 10 minutes and told myself if I just did it right this time we could get this job done and then I could go give myself a pitty party. Well I got it done right, we got the cow doctored and I got to go home and patch up my thumb. Turns out I didn’t hurt my thumb that bad I just got a little rope burn and a few blood blisters. The next day it didn’t even hurt that bad. If I would have submitted to my excuse we would have had a mess of a cow that needed doctoring that was now dragging a rope and would have had to pay someone to come out and take care of something that I should have done.
I wish that all excuses were that cut and dry. It’s the little ones that sneak in that make it harder for us to overcome. I know that I am really working on fighting the ones that I come up with and I hope that you do as well. I have big goals and dreams and I am not going to miss them because of some excuses that turns out to not be a can’t but instead becomes just a stepping stone that makes my journey to my goals an adventure.
Ranch Wife Ramblings 