What’s your excuse?

George Washington Carver, the botanist and inventor---who as a black man in the Reconstruction era of nineteenth century America had reason upon reason for not succeeding---once observed, “Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”

Carver made a conscious decision not to allow his disadvantages keep him from making positive contributions to life.

I admit, I have to stand guard over myself lest I fall into the excuse-making syndrome. Last week I had some time with my oldest daughter, Mary, while waiting at the airport for her brother to arrive. I was sharing with her some of the things I “needed” to do in a certain area of my life but hadn’t done yet. “Dad, you’ve been talking about that forever,” she said. “You just need to take the advice you’ve given us (her brothers and sister) all these years, set your goals, make plans to achieve them, and then just do it.”

Sometimes we need reminders because it’s easy to drift into a morass of mediocrity in certain areas of our lives.

Mary’s conversation reminded me of something my wife told me me several years ago. “You’ve been talking about writing a book since we’ve been married. I’m going to stay after you until you do it, and I’m not to let up.” (I like living, and her “publish or perish” mandate scared me so much that I published three books, and just to stay on her good side, I’m working on a fourth.)

While I wasn’t as creative in my excuse making as W.C. Fields, who advised, “Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore always carry a small snake,” I found that the generalization, “I’ve got so much to do, I don’t have time,” worked just as well.

Recently, Harriet Thompson of Charlotte, NC, became at age 92, the oldest woman to finish a marathon. I looked her up. Thompson has acres of room for excuses not to run, beginning with her age, a 92-year-old woman running 26.2 miles. It took her 7 hours, 7 minutes, and 42 seconds to do it, but by golly she did it. 

She had other reasons not to show up for the race: She is a two-time cancer survivor.

But there’s more: She missed out on training in late 2014 and early 2015 because her husband of 67 years died in January after battling cancer.

That’s not all: While training for this race, she contracted a staph infection in her legs. (She wore white tights under her running shorts to cover open wounds on her legs and had only recently stopped taking morphine and hydrocodone to manage the pain.)

One of the keys to overcoming the excuse-making habit is to have reasons for accomplishing the goal that are stronger than the excuses. Not only has Thompson fought cancer herself, but she also has several friends and family who have battled blood cancers. Since 1999, she has raised about $100,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. On May 31, 2015, the day she set the record as the oldest woman to finish a marathon, she raised $8,000.

“I never try to compete,” she told race organizers. “I just try and make money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.”

So, what’s keeping you from achieving that goal you’ve had on your mind all these years? Start now. Time is on your side if you will only take the first step in the direction of your dream.

Coach Lou Holtz tells about a man who had been thinking about taking up the saxophone. All his life he had yearned to play in a jazz band. But just as he was about to purchase the instrument and take lessons, he balked. When his wife asked him why, he replied, “I’m forty-five. I just realized it will take five years of intense practice before I’m ready to play in public. I’ll be fifty by then.”

You’ve got to love the response his wife gave him: “And how old will you be in five years if you don’t study the saxophone?”

He got the message, bought the sax, and within four years was gigging every weekend in local jazz clubs.

I get the message, too.

And I’m sure you do as well.