What's Your Excuse?

What holds you back from achieving more than you do? Money? Time? How about excuses?

If anybody had a reason to make excuses, it was Paul Richard Alexander. As a child, polio paralyzed him and severely damaged his respiratory system. From age six until he died at 78, Paul was confined to a machine called an iron lung – a medical contraption that enabled him to breathe.

The machine kept Paul alive. but it also imprisoned him. Only his head was exposed at one end of the metal cylinder. To everyone else, life appeared bleak for Paul. But Paul didn’t see it that way. Despite his condition, he saw opportunity, not limitations. Even with his arms and hands locked inside the iron lung, he figured out how to write, type, and even paint using instruments in his mouth. With determination, he graduated from college at age 32 and law school at age 38. He was admitted to the bar two years later and spent eight years writing his autobiography. Paul Richard Alexander used his limitations as a reason to succeed rather than an excuse to fail.

What about you and me? Sure, most of us are blessed with sight, hearing, and full use of our arms and legs. But we have weaknesses, too. Do we make plans anyway? Or do we make excuses?

As John Wooden, one of the greatest basketball coaches in history, said, “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”