CURE YOURSELF OF EXCUSITIS, THE FAILURE DISEASE

Go deep into your study of people, and you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis.

Persons with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t.

Once the victim of this failure disease has selected a “good” excuse, he sticks with it. Then he relies on the excuse to explain to himself and others why he is not going forward.

Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. At first the victim of excusitis knows his alibi is more or less a lie. But the more frequently he repeats it, the more convinced he becomes that it is completely true, that the alibi is the real reason for his not being the success he should be.

THE FOUR MOST COMMON FORMS OF EXCUSITIS

Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are health excusitis, intelligence excusitis, age excusitis, and luck excusitis.

1. “But My Health Isn’t Good.”

Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good” to the more specific “I’ve got such-and-such wrong with me.”

FOUR THINGS YOU CAN DO TO KICK HEALTH EXCUSITIS

The best vaccine against health excusitis consists of these four doses:

• Refuse to talk about your health.

• Refuse to worry about your health.

• Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is. There’s an old saying worth repeating often: “I felt sorry for myself because I had ragged shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

Remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.”

2. “But You’ve Got to Have Brains to Succeed.”

Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence:

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

We can’t do much to change the amount of native ability, but we can certainly change the way we use what we have.

Knowledge is power-when you use it constructively. Closely allied to intelligence excusitis is some incorrect thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is only potential power. Knowledge is power only when put to use—and then only when the use made of it is constructive.

THREE WAYS TO CURE INTELLIGENCE EXCUSITIS

Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:

• Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.

• Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”

• Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop ideas, to find new and better ways to do things.

3. “It’s No Use. I’m Too Old (or Too Young).”

Age excusitis, the failure disease of never being the right age, comes in two easily identifiable forms: the “I’m too old” variety and the “I’m too young” brand.

HOW TO HANDLE AGE EXCUSITIS

How old we are is not important. It’s one’s attitude toward age that makes it a blessing or a barricade. Curing yourself of age excusitis often opens doors to opportunities that you thought were locked tight.

In quick recap, the cure for age excusitis is:

• Look at your present age positively. Think, “I’m still young,” not “I’m already old.” Practice looking forward to new horizons and gain the enthusiasm and the feel of youth.
• Compute how much productive time you have left. Remember, a person age thirty still has 80 percent of his productive life ahead of him. And the fifty-year-old still has a big 40 percent—the best 40 percent—of his opportunity years left. Life is actually longer than most people think!
• Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. It’s too late only when you let your mind go negative and think it’s too late. Stop thinking “I should have started years ago.” That’s failure thinking. Instead think, “I’m going to start now, my best years are ahead of me.” That’s the way successful people think.

4. “But My Case Is Different; I Attract Bad Luck.”

There is a cause for everything. Nothing happens without a cause.

CONQUER LUCK EXCUSITIS IN TWO WAYS

• Accept the law of cause and effect.

• Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success.