Mamas, it’s been awhile since I’ve written about something like this. I tend to stick with saving money, parenting, some cleaning, some mama hack type things, but not just something about life. I’ve had something on my mind for a few months. I read a blog post on prenatal fitness a couple months ago and it said, multiple times, “no excuses” to not being fit during pregnancy. Never once touched on the fact that some women have medical reasons to not exercise during pregnancy. It really grated on me. Both of my (successful) pregnancies I have been either borderline high risk or fully high risk. Both meant no exercising for me. The post did do something good for me. It got me thinking. What is the difference between an excuse and a reason?
No Excuses
An excuse is made up. Or using something real as a way to get out of something. “Oh, I can’t exercise because I have no time” or “I can’t go to XYZ because my kids.” Can both of those be a legit reason? Yes! But more often than not they, and other real things, are used as excuses. As ways to get out of something. I have totally done it myself. We convince ourselves that something is a real, honest to goodness reason, instead of admitting we just don’t want to do something.
Legit Reasons
Some things are real reasons. Sometimes those are medical reasons, like high risk pregnancies and not being able to safely exercise. Sometimes we really, truly don’t have enough time left to do something, even though we manage our time well. Other times we don’t have the money to do something, no matter how far we get the budget to stretch. Those are things that are real and not being used to get out of doing something.
What's the difference between an excuse and a reason? Click To TweetHow to Tell the Difference
This is the tricky part. How can we tell if we are using an excuse or a reason? I’m not talking about what you tell other people, but what we tell ourselves. We can be pretty darn good at convincing ourselves of things. Obviously when it comes to medical conditions, it’s pretty obvious. It’s the other stuff that can be harder. One way to figure out if you are just giving yourself an excuse is, are you trying to find a reason? Are you trying to find a way to get out of doing something you really don’t want to do? If the answer is yes, you’re probably just making an excuse.
That’s not to say that you can not want to do something and have a legitimate reason. That is possible. It’s just that if we don’t want to do something or don’t want to put the effort in, even if these are subconscious, we are likely to look for reasons to not do it, to make an excuse.
So what do we do about it? Do we even need to do anything about it? That’s up to you. For me, personally, I’m trying to make a better effort to just admit that, hey, I don’t want to go to an event or cut cable to save money or exercise when I’m super tired. Maybe we still need to push through and do those things but I think we should just own up to the actually feelings instead of making an excuse. If you have an actual reason, embrace it. But if you are just making an excuse, own the feelings behind the excuse. Let’s make “no excuses” actually mean “embrace the truth.”
Shannon says
I think we often confuse these two in our own minds. Good points.