One of my guilty pleasures is watching excuse theater.
It’s when people get super creative with and highly energized by their justifications for not doing things.
Like when they deliver a bullet point list of the unforeseen circumstances outside of their control that caused them to miss the deadline. Or when they dig deep into their robust repertoire of qualified rejections in response to your simple, direct invitation. Or when they regale you with the overdramatic sob story about why they haven’t returned your email in thirteen months.
Or my personal favorite, when someone not only gives you multiple excuses for bailing out on the fourth consecutive weekend, but also starts enlisting other people as cocouncil in their bullshit argument.
It’s sweet, glorious music.
And in fact, excuse theater is not only entertaining, it’s also admirable. Especially when people’s excuses grow more sophisticated, detailed, plausible and creative. There’s part of me that wants to salute. Their flawless social evasions are oscar worthy performances.
But of course, there’s still a lot of empathy. Because being a person of action difficult. For a lot of people.
After all, everyone is fighting a battle that we know nothing about. And yes, we certainly wish they would spend half as much time doing things as they apparently do inventing and performing reasons why they can’t.
But since it’s not our job to be their accountabilibuddy, sometimes the best thing we can do is sit back and enjoy the show.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Who do you know that has a perfect narrative of excuses and failure?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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