A psychologist studying the lives of identical twins once interviewed two brothers who had been raised by a father who was a terrible alcoholic.
One of the twins was leading a life just like his father’s: struggling with alcoholism, bad finances, and an unhappy family life. “What else could I have done?” he explained. “You know what my father was like.”
This was exactly what the researcher had expected to find. Alcoholism and family trauma are passed down and perpetuated from generation to generation. So he was shocked when he interviewed the other brother because there he found the exact opposite.
This man lived in a nice home with a happy family. He had never touched alcohol. Baffled, the psychologist asked him to explain how he had created such a healthy life for himself. His response was, word-for-word, the same as his brother’s: “What else could I have done? You know what my father was like.”1
Excuses vs. Explanations
This story highlights the difference between excuses and explanations.
The first brother used his horrible childhood as an excuse to become exactly like his father. It’s how he was raised. It was in his genes. What else could he do?
The second brother used that same horrible childhood as an explanation for why he’d resolved to be nothing like his father. He had the same upbringing and the same genes, but he viewed those as reasons to avoid alcohol and work hard to cultivate a healthy lifestyle.
Excuses and explanations might contain the exact same words, but the meaning behind those words couldn’t be more different. Excuses justify inaction and poor choices. Explanations encourage positive action and guide you toward better choices.
Excuses turn you into a passive victim. They keep you stuck or encourage you to become worse. They operate as self-fulfilling prophecies, obliging you to act according to an unhelpful interpretation of who you are.
Explanations are empowering. They help you be proactive, leading you toward tools and strategies that suit your needs.
I’m personally prone to addiction, ADHD, and depression, but this is not an excuse to freely indulge in addictive drugs and media or to neglect the practices that mitigate ADHD and prevent depression. Rather, the fact that I have these tendencies is the explanation for why I run a full-court press on myself. It’s why I’m so dedicated to self-improvement. And it’s why I’m so passionate about turning disadvantages into opportunities.
Let’s look at some more examples to see just how powerful this distinction is.
“I have a health problem.”
My dad has a heart condition called atrial fibrillation, or Afib, which means one of the upper chambers of his heart doesn’t pump blood – it just flutters uselessly.2 Basically, he only has three-quarters of a functional heart. This makes strenuous exercise more difficult because, as he puts it, “My engine isn’t firing on all cylinders.”
Many people would take an Afib diagnosis as an excuse to take it easy and avoid strenuous exercise. But my dad sees it as a reason to exercise even more. If your heart is naturally weak, he argues, you should do everything you can to make it stronger.
So he goes regularly to the gym, skis, swims, bikes, and hikes. He’s in better shape than most Americans, and far fitter than most men his age (67 as of this writing). He has a heart condition, but that’s not an excuse to let things get worse – it’s an explanation for why he works so hard to make things better.
Dad with us at the top of a strenuous hike last summer.
“I’m dyslexic.”
My old boss, Greg Smith, has dyslexia. Reading and writing are both very hard for him. This could easily have been an excuse for him to avoid reading and writing, do poorly in school, and find a career that didn’t require those skills.
Instead, he worked hard to become a good student, attended a liberal arts college, and is the owner of Northwest Educational Services – a Seattle-based tutoring company. His job involves nonstop reading and writing.
Photo by Ashley Welling Photography
As Greg explains, dyslexia forced him to become skilled at active reading, so while he may be slower than the average person, he reads more deeply and more effectively than most people.
Furthermore, his understanding of what it’s like to navigate school with a learning challenge like dyslexia enables him to better connect with his students. It helped him cultivate a passion for learning how to learn and sharing that wisdom with others. What could have been an excuse to aim low in life is instead an explanation for Greg’s success.
“I’m not a math person.”
One of the most common learning challenges I hear is “I’m not a math person.” By this, the person means that math doesn’t come easily for them. And, typically, this becomes an excuse to disengage from math: to zone out in class, to give up quickly when they don’t understand the homework, and to otherwise avoid math as much as possible. The student slips into a downward spiral of math avoidance, falling further and further behind.
The validity of this excuse falls apart when we consider the example of Dr. Barbara Oakley, a woman who is so “not a math person” that she flunked basic algebra in high school. She initially became a translator – a career that required no math – but later discovered the science of effective learning, put those strategies into practice, and became a professor of engineering.3
If you’re not a math person now, you can become a math person by understanding how to learn. You can choose to engage in mastery learning via spaced repetition, massed practice, and interleaving. You can seek out better explanations via YouTube, Khan Academy, tutors, and one-on-one time with the teacher during office hours. You can patch holes in the foundation of your math knowledge – fixing the learning gaps that are preventing you from understanding current topics.
There are similar stories and strategies that negate excuses like “I’m not athletic” and “I’m not creative.”
“I have ADHD.”
If you have ADHD, focusing is harder for you than it is for most people. This diagnosis – and the label – can easily become an excuse to allow yourself to be unfocused. By that, I mean allowing distractions to persist in your environment and giving yourself easy access to addictive apps, websites, and games.
Focus is a mental muscle that you can train through mindfulness meditation, yoga, reading, art, and any other task that requires deliberate focus. Having ADHD just means your attention muscle is naturally weaker. It doesn’t mean you can’t use that muscle or strengthen it with practice. You can. In fact, there are many things you can do to not just survive but thrive with ADHD.
And note how there’s no difference in phrasing: “I have ADHD” can be either an explanation or an excuse. Which one it is depends on your mindset and your choices. “I have ADHD” is a true statement either way. But when it’s an explanation, it’s something you can say with pride, as you make choices that improve your brain health, limit distractions, and strengthen your ability to focus.
“I’m autistic.”*
This explains why some situations cause stronger-than-typical emotional reactions, but it doesn’t excuse you from the practice of emotional regulation.
This is an explanation for why you struggle with mental flexibility, but it’s not an excuse to avoid deliberately cultivating this skill.
*I’m referring to high-functioning people on the autism spectrum.
“I have an addictive personality.”
Being naturally prone to addiction is a perfectly valid explanation of why you’re easily hooked by drugs, sugar, and video games, but it’s not a valid excuse to give in to your addictive tendencies.
It means you need to be more careful and more strategic about avoiding addiction than most people. You’ll need to draw “bright lines”4 regarding what you do and do not do, abstaining completely from the most problematic things. And you’ll need to be mindful of The River and its power to cause relapse.
“I’m not a morning person.”
This explains why you struggle with motivation and executive function in the morning, but it’s not an excuse to sleep in and just do random stuff for the first two hours of the day.
Personally, I’m not naturally a morning person. To deal with this, I plan my days the night before and have a well-defined morning routine. My alarm is on the other side of the room, so I can’t just roll over and hit snooze. I get up, whether I feel like it or not, and begin the daily rituals that get my mind and body moving.
“I’m really busy/tired/sad.”
Feeling down, feeling lazy, feeling out of it – these are not excuses to neglect your self-care routines. These are reasons to be even more committed to your protocols today.5 After all, you have these healthy habits in order to improve your mental health and increase your energy. So although you might feel like it’ll cost too much willpower to do what’s best for you, you’ll get a great return on investment for your efforts.
“I’m really busy and stressed out” is not an excuse to skip your workout. It’s the explanation as to why that workout is extra important today.
“I have too much on my mind” is not an excuse to skip your morning meditation. It’s the reason why you really need to meditate today.
“There’s an obstacle.”
An obstacle can be a reason for a delay. It can be an explanation for why you’re sweaty, scratched up, and covered in dirt. But it should never be an excuse to quit. Imagine a movie where the hero gave up the first time they encountered a problem. How lame would that be? Well, you’re the hero in your own life’s story, so don’t give up when difficulties arise.
And of course there will be obstacles in your path. If you’re doing something meaningful with your life, if you’re choosing to do hard things because they’re worth doing, there are going to be challenges. Don’t forget that these struggles make you stronger. They’re not just annoyances, delays, and frustrations. They’re also opportunities to learn, grow, and, sometimes, find a better way.6
“Something bad happened to me.”
Most everyone has heard of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is a real and serious problem for many people. Sadly, few people have heard of its counterpart, post-traumatic growth (PTG). Surprisingly, it’s quite common for survivors of horrible traumas to come out stronger in some ways.7
No one would wish for something terrible to happen to them, but when such things do occur, it is possible to use them as fuel for growth. Shit, after all, makes good fertilizer. PTG isn’t likely to happen without effort, though. Things like self-care and cognitive therapy have been shown to help a great deal.8
“What we go through in life, the knocks we take, the losses we experience—they aren’t fun. If we had a choice, we may choose for them not to happen. But still, we have no idea how they are preparing us, shaping us, even saving us. All we can do is try to find meaning, find lessons, find the opportunities in these moments, however tragic and painful they may be in the moment.” –Ryan Holiday9
Past trauma can be a valid explanation for why you avoid certain situations or for why you have outsized emotional reactions to certain stimuli. But it shouldn’t be an excuse to let those emotions control you. And it should never be an excuse to avoid living.
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault” can be an excuse that justifies inaction, letting things remain broken and messy, and being a passive victim of bad circumstances.
Or “it’s not my fault” can be a powerful explanation for why you were able to let go of caring about who’s responsible and turn your attention to the fact that you are response-able. As the film Good Will Hunting showed, realizing that it’s not your fault can be deeply liberating, letting you move on from the past and get on doing what you need to do.
This way of thinking and living is at the core of Stoic philosophy, so I’ll leave you with this guiding question from the great Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius (a question, by the way, that he wrote for himself in his journal).
“Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, humility, straightforwardness?” –Marcus Aurelius6
1 Ben-Shahar, Tal. Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology. Harvard Open Course, 2009.
2 “What Is Afib?” Johns Hopkins Medicine.
3 Oakley, Barbara. A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even if you Flunked Algebra). Penguin, 2014.
4 Johnson, Brian. “PNTV: Bright Line Eating by Susan Thompson (#388)”
5 Johnson, Brian. “Emotional Stamina.” Optimize Plus One Series.
6 Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is The Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Portfolio/Penguin, 2014.
7 “Post-Traumatic Growth.” Psychology Today.
8 McDermott, Nicole. “Post-Traumatic Growth: Everything You Need To Know.” Forbes. April 28, 2023.
9 Holiday, Ryan. “We Can Find The Gift In It.” Daily Stoic Emails. February 19, 2024.