In a brief audio clip featured by Success Video, John Maxwell shares two practices leaders should enact in order to make themselves more effective and productive:
- Stop making excuses.
- Understand the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.
Maxwell is passionate about the importance of eliminating excuses. While he acknowledges that in the process of life, leadership, and success there sometimes are legitimate excuses for why we don’t do well, overall, excuses derail, detour, and distract us. “I think excuses are exit signs. I think you’re on the freeway of success and you’re moving in the right direction, and I think every time you make an excuse you pull off,” Maxwell says.
Maxwell goes on to explain that he thinks it’s easier to go from failure to success than it is to go from excuses to success, referring to something Peter Drucker once said: “There are two kinds of people – those who produce results, and those who give excuses.”
If you eliminate excuses, then you can’t use them. You have to instead go to work fixing it, making it, learning it, finding it, or achieving it.
“Either get it done, figure out how to get it done, or go to somebody that can get it done. Get it done. Period.”
Maxwell concludes the audio segment on Success Video by explaining that growth will only happen in leadership if you work on it daily:
“You’ve got to do it every day. You don’t do it twice a week, you don’t do it just Monday through Friday. You just do it every day. And if you really practice every day the right thing, it becomes a major habit, and when it becomes a major habit, then you just do the right thing every day because that’s what you do.”
What valuable, practical, and applicable advice for every leader, including you and me! Stop making excuses – just get it done. And understand that the secret to your success is determined by your daily agenda – so do it every day.
To listen to the full audio clip from Success Video, click here.
What excuses are holding you back from reaching the next level?
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