Imagine you’re going for a job interview the next day. It’s for a position you’ve had your eye on for a while. You’ve been preparing for weeks, practising your responses, laying out the right outfit. You’ve got everything down pat. Then you get a phone call. Maybe someone close to you has passed away. Maybe your partner has called to break up with you. Maybe it’s a horrible test result you weren’t expecting. Then your mood shifts dramatically. You’ve gone from feeling pumped to absolutely shattered. So what do you do about the interview? Do you cancel it?

Going through with it 

This job interview analogy is the way I like to describe why ‘success means no excuses’.

Let’s say you decided to go ahead with the interview. If you were to walk into the room, your prospective employer wouldn’t know that your loved one just passed away. They wouldn’t know that the most important person in your life just broke up with you. They wouldn’t know that your test results just came back positive. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be ethical for them to take that into consideration. They simply would not care. All they would care about is the impression that you leave with them, up until you disappear from that very room.

I believe achieving any sort of success in life is just like this job interview analogy.

Photo Credit: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Juggling it all

I often think about how difficult my life is juggling it all; juggling my three young children, juggling my marriage, and juggling my writing. But then I remember, if I really want to have a successful writing career, there are no excuses. It doesn’t matter how busy I am. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had a long day screaming at the kids. It doesn’t matter if I’ve spent the whole day rushing to and from appointments. It doesn’t matter that I have a million different things running through my head.

Fact is, if I want to be successful at what I do  – at writing – then I have to make the time, and put in the effort to write.

• If I have to write an article for a freelancing job, I must do it.
• If I have to write for my regular columnist gigs, I must do it.
• If I have to write a blog post, I must do it.
• If I have to finish an article pitch, I must do it.

And it doesn’t matter how tired I am, how busy my life is, how badly I feel like giving up. If I want it that bad, I have to prove it not only through my words but through my actions. I need to make the sacrifices.

Success means no excuses

We will always have reasons as to why we can’t do something, why we shouldn’t do something, why we won’t do something. But what do excuses also mean? No results.

Next time you start procrastinating, next time you think you have a reason not to start something, picture that job interview situation.

You are one of many fighting for the same ‘job’. If you want to stand out, you’re going to have to stop making excuses and start making good impressions instead.

Only when you take responsibility for your own actions, can you truly be on the road to success.

Thuy Le (formerly known as Thuy Yau) is a freelance writer and Youth Work graduate living in Perth, Australia. She loves to share her own personal experiences about overcoming adversity, as she believes that human beings are more capable than they realise. She writes to make a positive difference in the world and to inspire others to learn from themselves and their own experiences. Her writing has been discussed on radio, won writing contests, appeared on The Huffington Post UK and major Australian sites such as news.com.au, SMH, Kidspot and Essential Kids. She has just completed her first book – a memoir - and is on the search for a publisher.