~by Haley Lynn Gray~
There’s a difference between a reason and an excuse, and it isn’t about whether the thing you’re saying is true.
A reason is a fact about your circumstances. An excuse is a true fact you’re using to avoid making a decision.
“I couldn’t call them, I was at the hospital with my mother” is a reason. “I couldn’t call them, I’ve been really busy” is usually an excuse — not because it’s false, but because busy is permanent and you’re using it to avoid noticing that you don’t want to make the call.
How you tell which one you’re holding
Three questions, and they’re uncomfortable on purpose.
Does it have an end date? Real constraints resolve. “Until the builders finish” or “until this contract is delivered” are reasons with edges. “When things calm down” doesn’t have an edge, which is how you know.
Have you used it more than twice? The same explanation appearing repeatedly across months has stopped describing a circumstance and started describing a position.
Would you accept it from someone who worked for you? This one is the most reliable. If an employee gave you this explanation for the third time, what would you think? Most of us apply a considerably more generous standard to ourselves, and noticing the gap is the whole exercise.
What’s usually underneath
The things we make excuses about are rarely the difficult things. They’re the exposing ones.
Raising the price, because they might say no. Following up, because the silence might mean something. Posting the thing you wrote, because someone might disagree. Having the conversation with the person who isn’t performing, because it’ll be unpleasant and they might cry.
Nobody makes excuses about the accounts. People make excuses about the things where they could be rejected, and then explain it as time.
Which means the useful question isn’t “how do I get more disciplined?” It’s “what am I actually avoiding, and what am I afraid happens if I do it?” That question has an answer, and the answer is almost always smaller than the avoidance suggests.
Why it compounds quietly
One excuse is nothing. That’s what makes them difficult — no single instance is worth worrying about, and at the time each looks isolated.
But the price you didn’t raise in March is still unraised in December, and you’ve now done a year of work at the wrong rate. The person you didn’t address in spring is still there in autumn, and three good people have quietly updated their view of what’s tolerated here.
You can see the effect clearly afterwards. You can almost never see it at the time, which is why the habit is worth catching rather than the instance.
What this isn’t about
I want to be clear, because I’ve written this badly before.
This is not an argument for working more hours. Rest isn’t an excuse — it’s an input to the judgement your business runs on, and a tired owner makes the easy decision rather than the right one. Taking a proper day off is not a failure of commitment.
Nor is it about the genuine seasons where something else legitimately takes priority. A sick parent, a new baby, an illness of your own. Those are real, and dressing them up as excuses to be overcome is both cruel and useless.
The distinction is whether you’re deciding or drifting. “I’m not growing the business this year because my mother needs me” is a decision, and a perfectly good one. “I keep meaning to, but things are hectic” is a drift, and twelve months of it costs you a year.
What to do about it
Name the actual thing. Out loud, to someone, once. “I haven’t raised my prices because I’m afraid of losing the two clients who pay the bills.” Said plainly, it becomes a problem with options rather than a vague weight.
Then make it small. Not “raise all prices.” Quote the next new enquiry higher and see what happens. Small enough that starting is trivial.
And tell one person what you’re going to do. An accountability partner, a peer, someone whose opinion you care about. Not a coach necessarily — just one person at your level who’ll ask you about it next month. That single mechanism converts more intentions into actions than any amount of resolve.
The short version
Excuses get you sympathy. They’re comfortable, they’re usually true, and everybody nods.
They just don’t get you clients, and the version of your business that exists in three years is built entirely out of the things you did while you didn’t especially feel like doing them.
Catch yourself, name what you’re avoiding, and take the smallest possible step toward it. That’s all of it.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
