Excuses

This is 2025. Somehow, you're in your early twenties with expectations for your life that people in the 1900s couldn't even dream of. You want financial freedom, meaningful work, a beautiful relationship, perfect health, social media validation, and a life that looks like the highlight reels you scroll through at 2 AM when you can't sleep because anxiety about your future keeps you awake.

And yet, somehow, nothing is falling into place for you.

And yet, somehow, you can't see it. Can't see that the only perspective you have on your situation is your circumstances. The external things. The things you can't control. The things that make perfect excuses for why you're not where you want to be.

Monday, you wake up and blame your circumstances. The public transport system is inefficient. Traffic is terrible. Your commute takes too long. Your boss doesn't appreciate you. Your coworkers are incompetent. The system is rigged against people like you.

Tuesday, you go to buy food and complain about how expensive everything has become. How the quality has dropped. How you can't afford to eat healthy. How cooking takes too much time. How life is just harder now than it used to be.

Wednesday, the person you've been talking to for months, the one you thought you had a future with, hits you with the text you never expected. They're not feeling it. The attraction isn't there. They don't see this going anywhere. Thanks for understanding.

You spend Thursday pretending you're fine, telling yourself you're better off, that they weren't right for you anyway, that you dodged a bullet, that you're focusing on yourself now.

Friday, the job you've been applying for, the one you've been checking your email obsessively about for seven months, finally responds. Rejection. At least they sent a rejection this time instead of the silence you got from the previous applications.

You look at your credentials again. You're qualified. You graduated with the same degree as your classmate who just got hired at a top firm. Same university, same grades, same experience. Except his father is a business mogul. Except he has connections. Except life already started him several steps ahead while you're still at the starting line wondering why the race feels rigged.

Saturday, you wake up in bed and all the failures from the week have killed your spirit. You had plans to go to the gym. You were going to start that side project. You were going to be productive. But what's the point? Nothing you do seems to matter anyway. The system is against you. Life is unfair. You don't have the advantages other people have.

So you stay in bed. Scrolling. Comparing. Feeling sorry for yourself. Making excuses.

Let me tell you this,

The human mind is extraordinarily complex. It can convince you of almost anything. It's your best friend and your most dangerous enemy, often in the same hour. Your mind is instinctively designed for survival, which means it's designed to keep you safe, comfortable, away from risk and uncertainty and anything with an unknown outcome.

When your mind sees potential, when you're strong enough and brave enough and disciplined enough, it can guide you toward exploring that potential, toward taking risks, toward doing hard things that might fail but might also transform your life.

But most of the time? Most of the time, your mind is going to pull you away from anything uncomfortable. Anything that requires change. Anything that might expose you to failure, rejection, embarrassment, the possibility that you tried your best and your best wasn't enough.

So when things go wrong, when life doesn't work out the way you planned, your mind creates defenses. It generates excuses. It finds external factors to blame so you don't have to take responsibility for the internal work you're avoiding.

And here's what nobody wants to hear: you know yourself. You know your life. You know your weaknesses. You know what you're working with.

There's something called pretty privilege. It's real. Some people are born beautiful and life is easier for them in ways they don't even notice because they've never experienced life without that advantage.

But if you're not pretty, that's information, not an excuse.

You don't have a pretty face? Work on having a healthy body. You can't control your genetics but you can control whether you exercise, eat well, take care of your physical health.

You don't have a pretty face and you're struggling with weight? At least work on your sense of style. Learn what clothes flatter your body type. Learn about colors and fits and how to present yourself in ways that communicate you care about yourself.

You don't have a pretty face and your body isn't where you want it to be? At least don't smell like your problems. Basic hygiene is free. Cleanliness is accessible. Smelling good doesn't require a trust fund.

You don't have a pretty face? Work on your personality. Work on being interesting, being kind, being someone people enjoy being around. Work on your communication skills. Work on your emotional intelligence. Work on becoming the kind of person who makes others feel seen and valued.

Work on your diction, your intonation, the way you carry yourself in conversation. Work on being articulate, thoughtful, someone who adds value to every room they enter not through physical beauty but through presence, through substance, through the kind of character that makes people remember you long after the pretty faces have been forgotten.

As a man, if you don't come from a family with generational wealth, that's information, not an excuse.

Why not be the one who starts it? Why not be the origin point? Why not be the ancestor whose sacrifice and vision and relentless work creates the foundation that your children and grandchildren will build on?

You know your weaknesses. You know what you don't have. You know the ways life started you behind. So it's up to you to make up for it in other areas. It's up to you to work twice as hard, to be twice as strategic, to refuse to let your starting position determine your ending position.

Because if you spend today and tomorrow lamenting, complaining about the shape of your nose or the balance in your bank account or the family you were born into or the opportunities you didn't get, nothing changes.

And mind you, even after all your complaints, it's not like you can afford the plastic surgery to change your face. It's not like your complaining generates the money you need. It's not like your excuses create the opportunities you want.

So if you don't like something about yourself, if you know you're starting with disadvantages, if you're aware that life dealt you a difficult hand, that's your starting point, not your ending point.

It's up to you to work on the aspects of your life you can control to become at least presentable, at least competitive, at least someone who's clearly trying instead of someone who's clearly given up and wrapped their surrender in the language of systemic injustice.

Yes, systems are unjust. Yes, life is unfair. Yes, some people start ahead and some people start behind and that's not your fault.

But what you do with that information is your responsibility.

You can spend your energy making excuses, explaining why you can't, listing all the reasons your circumstances make success impossible. Or you can spend that same energy making changes, however small, however incremental, however insufficient they feel in the moment.

The person who isn't pretty but dresses well and smells good and has an engaging personality will go further than the person who isn't pretty and has decided that means they're destined to fail.

The person who doesn't have family wealth but works relentlessly and strategically and builds slowly will go further than the person who doesn't have family wealth and has decided that means success is impossible.

The person who faces rejection and disappointment and setbacks and keeps showing up will go further than the person who faces those same things and decides they're signs to give up.

Your mind will always offer you excuses. That's its job. To protect you from discomfort, from risk, from the possibility of trying hard and failing anyway.

But you don't have to accept every excuse your mind offers. You don't have to believe every story your brain tells about why things are impossible, why you're disadvantaged beyond recovery, why your circumstances are uniquely difficult in ways that justify your inaction.

You can acknowledge that yes, life is harder for you than it is for some people. And still decide that's not a good enough reason to stop trying.

You can acknowledge that yes, you're starting behind. And still decide to run the race anyway.

You can acknowledge that yes, you don't have certain advantages. And still work on developing others.

Because at the end of your life, nobody's going to care about your excuses. Nobody's going to write on your tombstone "Here lies someone who had really good reasons for not trying."

They're either going to remember you as someone who did something despite the obstacles, or they're not going to remember you at all.

And that's up to you.

Not your circumstances. Not your genetics. Not your family's bank account. Not the unfairness of the system.

You.

Your choices. Your effort. Your refusal to let excuses become your identity.

So stop blaming Monday's traffic and Tuesday's food prices and Wednesday's rejection and Friday's job application and Saturday's lack of motivation.

Start asking: what can I control? What can I change? What can I work on today that makes me slightly better than I was yesterday?

The answer is probably more than you think.

And definitely more than your excuses want you to believe.