ALIBI, The creator of misfortune

 

INTRO

The word alibi means making excuse for something done, in order to avoid responsibility or blame.

It might look implicit if I say giving excuses about things is a hereditary trait but it's good to remember the story of the biblical first man and woman (Adam and Eve), when asked about eating the forbidden fruit. 

Their reply to the question "Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof i commanded thee that thou should not eat?" Makes it vivid that as individuals we have an obvious urge to coin out excuses for things even though we know it is explicit to others that we are responsible for some of those things.

Should we say it is impossible to stop giving excuses?

Can alibi truly create misfortune?

At some point in our lives, we complain about things happening around us. We give excuses about the things we are suppose to do but ain't doing or for the ones we do wrong. At some age we felt bad about the excuses we give when some unpalatable things happen to us and so we decided that we would change and start working on turning alibi around for our good. 

After a lot of talk about these things and despite how hard we try to continue moving optimistically, a lot of things in our proximity makes us to fall back to Alibi's island.

Answering the following questions might help you know more about your alibi being the creator of misfortune.

• Do you constantly procrastinate on important tasks?
• Do you invest more of your time in urgent but unimportant tasks?
• Do you require cajoling to do necessary chores?
• Do you perform duties just to get by?
• Do you constantly talk negatively about your work?
• Do you prefer fun to work?
• Do efforts of friends to encourage you makes you feel uncomfortable around them?
• Do you start small projects and abandon them?
• Do you avoid personal development opportunities?

It's not easy to win the war against ignorance, hence we need to start identifying/knowing some factors or things that are possibly responsible for the alibi we give.

CAUSES OF ALIBI

I believe there are reasons behind everything and if the purpose of a thing is unknown, abuse are inevitable. So, it's necessary we talk about some possible things responsible for the alibi we give about things around us even when we ain't suppose to hide under the umbrella of those excuses.

Some of the factors responsible for our unabated alibi include the following:

1. Fear - 

This is one of the major causes of some unproductive alibi we give when we are faced with certain challenges or events. Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by our perception of danger. 

Fear is a powerful thing that open way to some of it avoidable siblings such as depression and idleness. Depression on it own, is a common mental disorder that affect huge number of the world's population. 

It is characterized by persistent sadness and a lack of interest or pleasure in previously remarkable or encouraging activities. It can also disturb sleep and appetite; tiredness and poor concentration are common. And idleness in the other hand, is  a state of being inactive and lacking alacrity to perform our activities which might eventually leads to feeling worthlessness.

Fear is a state of mind that we can actually overcome by doing some thorough soul-searching. In the panacea to fear, i talk about the 6 major types of fears; fear of criticism, fear of poverty, fear of loss of love of someone, fear of old age, fear of ill health and fear of death. 

The different types of fear have their unique way of penetrating individual's mind. Hence, it's necessary we make ourselves stronger than these fears by feeding our faith. By feeding your faith and starving your fear, alibi surrounding you would start losing their strength.

2. Failure - 

Just like Fear, Failure also makes us to create alibi around the things we don't succeed at.  Everybody fails, errs and makes mistakes but how we see failure matters. 

Obviously, average people and achieving people don't see failure the same way. To achieving people, failure is simply the price we pay to achieve success while average people see it as an obstacle to success.  

It's certain we would fail some times in our life but does that make us failure? The answer is explicitly NO because at some point in life, especially to overcome alibi, it's necessary we realize failure is good as it open us up to insights and lessons that will strengthen our path to success because in the long run we give ourselves the permission to fail or permission to excel. 

As individuals, when we experience failure, it's either we fail backward or we fail forward. A good question to ask here is: How do we fail forward? This can be known through our reaction to failure and in order to fail forward we need to learn from our mistakes, challenge outdated assumptions, take responsibility for our actions, know that failure is a part of progress, take new risks and persevere. 

You have to move beyond your failures because when achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic. So, you don't need to take failure personal. You need to get a new definition of failure for your alibi to diminish.

3. Inferiority Complex - 

This is another common causes of alibi in our society.  Inferiority complex is a way of feeling that one is of low standard to other members of the society in some aspect of life. It's obvious that the feeling is based on our submission to certain challenges, ideology or situation in our populace. 

☑ Read: how to overcome inferiority complex

Well, it's good to be open to some of our environment's ideology and believe but that doesn't mean we should allow those things to decide or design our own life. We can always listen to people perspective on things happening around us because we might have some tangible things to learn from what they say since no human know everything about all the things in the universe. 

But that doesn't mean we should give people the right to register some unproductive things in our subconscious mind. Due to other people's ideology, at some point of our life we begin to compare ourselves with others forgetting that we have some untapped potential. 

Comparing ourselves to others is one of the worse things that can happen to us and instead of doing that, it's better we compare ourselves with ourselves. Like you compare yourself with yourself; your last year with this year; your last month with this month; your yesterday with your today, in order to keep improving daily. 

If you are able to keep improving yourself, you will notice that feeling inferior won't be part of you and through that your alibis will keep going down.

Identifying the factors responsible for our alibi won't be much different from not identifying them, if we do not know how to solve the problem and start taking actions that would help reduce the rate at which they torment us. 

Solution to Alibi, the creator of misfortune

1. Knowing yourself 

This is the first thing every individual need to do. Because It's certain that a man who doesn't know himself will fall for another's identity. 

In order to know yourself, you need to answer some questions, such as:

• How do you usually respond to unpleasant experiences? 
• Do you get angry about it? 
• Do you become emotional? 
• Do you abstain yourself from the experience as much as possible? 
• Do you give excuses for it occurrence?

Well in knowing yourself, there are some challenges or problems you need to meditate and brainstorm about because every problem introduces a person to himself. Although some individuals manage negative experiences well, while others struggle.

Changing The Definition Of "NO"

In knowing myself, sometimes I feel like organizing a get together party for all those that said "NO" to me in one way or the other because without them I realized I might not have changed or start growing. 

Because life involve growth even when we think we ain't suppose to be growing again due to some certain heights we might have reached. And to grow, one need to be intentional about it because it's difficult to convince someone whose intention is not related to growth. 

☑ Read: learn how to grow mentally, physically and spiritually.

To those people I wish to invite to the get together party, their "NO" means "Not Opportune" but to me their "NO" means "Next Opportunity" hence I keep preparing myself for the Opportunities ahead. 

I keep working on myself as if I would be given a prize or monetary reward for doing so even though I know it's certain that a swimming fish can never get away from the ocean without missing it ability to swim freely. 

☑ Read: take the risk and rise above your fears.

The pace at which I grow is slow and a bit disturbing some times but then I realize growing is actually better than being stagnant especially when you know that there are lot of overwhelming things attached to growth. 

Anyway, it's even said that slow and steadfastness wins the race. Hence my consistency is really worth celebrating by me and the amazing people in my proximity.

Those people ( my loving rejected squad ) then were actually getting some certain indescribable joy from their action. I can even remember how one specifically told me that I'm not as elegant as the top notched populace she has. 

• How elegant can a stagnant individual be? 
• How compelling is the word elegant to her? 
• Do i really need to be elegant because of someone else personality?
• Am I really not elegant enough? 
• Was it my fault? 

Maybe Yes or may be I was just too carried away by my close-minded way of acquainting myself to people that don't really need me in their serendipitous populace or I was actually digging an early grave for myself by being stagnant without a cogent reason. 

A lot of unpleasant thoughts keep flowing through my mind with no one nearby to give me a concise reason for these un-abating and agitating things walking freely within my mind as if i don't have the right to stop them from moving in my subconscious environment.

Later, I realized that those people don't really have the right to decide certain things about my life and how i want it to turn out rather I can use their advice and words of encouragement as grease to my growth pathway even when I don't really know how long the journey with take me because sometimes one need to know the time frame of things around him or her but alas I didn't really need to know my own time frame, all i have to do was to just keep moving and then the way will become more clear and amazing to walk through. 

I decide to turn their Alibi, the creator of misfortune to my own breakthrough platform of gravitating towards the promise land i can create for myself and the people around me.

I'm really glad they said those indirect and direct things they have in mind then, especially when I felt my alibi for misfortune was really cogent and worth walking home with. Even though within me i was expecting them to give me some contingency compliment.

It would be ungrateful for me not to recognize their impact and how well they have done, including those that will still say "NO" later on the journey.

You all deserve some acclamation. Maybe it's not just an acclamation.

Possibly i should rather take them on a tour, show them what their NO has brought. And at the end of the tour, give them an handshake or a hug and then tell them can I get another NO from you!

I guess there should be some awards for those guys because they are really wonderful despite the fact they were a bit negative in their expression. 

• But does their negativity really matters again?
• Are they still negatively charged? 
• Do they feel good about the growth process going on now? 
• Do they know that alibi is the creator of misfortune? 
• Will they be able to turn their alibi around?

Well, those are some of the questions I would love to ask if they actually attend the get together party we would have when the time comes.

Understanding Your Personality

The kind of personality you have really have some powerful things in store for you especially when you made out time to do thorough searching of details within you.

As it's certain that a man who knows himself thoroughly can actually move mountains that are quite obvious and disturbing to crack, how much more moving them.

There are many personalities people possess but four out of these are worth enumerating. These four are actually common and accessing their significant can actually open doors of unexpected breakthrough for an individual.

The four personalities are:

• Phlegmatic - This is the most stable personality type or temperament. People with this type of personality are peaceful, sympathetic, honest, emotionally intelligent, likable, easygoing, people oriented and calm at some point of their life. 

But they have some weaknesses which evolve around tendency to be sluggish to action when not in charge. Gladly, their weakness, seen as alibi, can be overcomed by seeing value in what need to be done.

• Melancholic - This is one of the alluring personalities. The strength of this personality type include; paying attention to details of things, being life perfectionist but their main weakness is the fear of making mistake. They are scared of making mistake in things they involve in as a result of their affection for people and life. 

Amazingly, the alibi of their weakness can be turned around by focusing on the joy they will derive from learning new things from their mistakes and the potential of growing or developing through their mistakes.

• Sanguine -This personality is the most versatile type because people with it are social, fun-loving and are referred to as the life of the party. 

They complete or are attracted to other personality types. Their weakness is lack of focus. But the weakness can be made productive by paying attention to details of things given. 

• Choleric - This is the most active of the personality types. They are extroverted in nature, they take charge easily and make decisions quickly as they are ambitious and brave but they can also be violent or bad tempered, deceitful, vindictive or nasty especially when they are not in charge of activities or events they participate in. 

Since their strength is more appealing than their weakness, they can actually use their strength to improve themselves by focusing on the decisions they can make. So, their weakness is not a tangible alibi to hinder their growth.

2. Working on your environment.

Our environment is one of the major factors that increase the rate at which we coin out alibi or excuses for things happening within and around us. Imagine you staying in a place full of negative atmosphere and the people around are flowing freely with such atmosphere. 

If you are the type that is willing to grow beyond your current situation. At some point, staying in that kind of environment would threaten you and make you do some things that can make you start looking shabby as if you now work as sanitary inspector. 

And those things would make you to keep drowning in the ocean of alibi without knowing what to do because you guess you don't have a life jacket with you. But sometimes those with life jackets still get drown without surviving the unforeseen accident. 

At this point you will be wondering and pondering on some striking thought that agitate lugubrious questions such as: 

• Is it possible to survive this accident? 
• What can I do to survive this atmosphere? How will I start working on my survival here? 
• Where should I start from? 
• When will I know I have been able to survive the atmosphere?

There are many answers to the different questions up there but the major answer is you starting from that current position and acting now instead of postponing your action for some unrealistic alibis you wish to elaborate. 

Your environment can't determine your life although it has been influencing you but it is true that you can change and start influencing your environment despite the fact that you are not as prepared as you wish you need to be. But sometime preparation doesn't just come up unless we start taking intentional steps to it. 

I have been in that kind of environment before now and I know how tough it was to survive it. It was not easy at all because I was like an atom in the environment filled with negatively charged giants. But guess what? I survive it. 

I stop making alibis around my environment and move at the pace I know would help me change for the better days ahead. Still yet, the environment keep pushing at me also. Although it's quite obvious that the better days won't come except I start making the good of my current day. 

And now I'm happy I start turning my bad days to good and it's amazing that the good days I'm making now would yield the better days I'm hoping for. And now I can tell you that a day is coming that my story will be life changing. Yes, your story will also change lives. 

So, you need to stop making alibis about your environment and start growing yourself via personal development because it will help you to expand your  mind and add to your skills. 

Although personal development is not all about expanding the mind and adding to our skills. It involve maintaining core integrity,even when it hurt us deeply. It means increasing our capacity as human beings and maturing our souls. 

3. Creating Alibi changers

There are lot of things you can do to change Alibi. These things are not magic or dramatic change producers but they can give you appealing results if they are being practiced consciously.

• Taking Responsibility - it's not easy to take responsibility of things, especially when you are the  kind of person who blames people a lot but it's good to know that you can accomplish it especially when you make it a Life goal, because Life goals are reached by setting annual goals. 

Annual goals are accomplished by reaching daily goals. Daily goals are achieved by doing things which may be unpleasant at first but eventually develop into habits. Habits are powerful. Habits change actions to attitudes, and attitudes become lifestyles.

You really need to take responsibility of your actions, thought and life. Plan yourself the best way you can, tap into your inner strength, work on yourself judiciously because if you do not design your own life plan, the obvious chances are you will fall into someone else's plan. 

And guess their plan for you? An abyss or nothing much.

Hence, you need to stop creating Alibi around your daily activities and begin to be proactive by taking responsibility for your life and the choices you make.

• Timing yourself - You need to time yourself on things as you work on changing Alibi, the creator of misfortune. This is because timing gives you a cogent drive or platform for achieving the things or goals you have put in place. Time has a way of running lose from most people, yet time is what life is made of. 

Everything we do requires time, yet many people don't take it serious. How your time is being spent is more important than how you spend your money. Well money is crucial to life.  Money mistakes can be corrected. But once time has passed, it can't be gotten back. And in timing, measurements is necessary as it is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement on things. 

If you can not quantify/measure something, you can not understand that thing. If you can’t understand it, you can’t take charge of it. And if you can’t take charge of it, then you can not improve it. 

Measurements is crucial to improvement. 

Some researchers who conducted experiments in productivity at the Hawthorne Works Plant outside Chicago in the 1930s discovered that when people knew their work was being measured, their productivity increased. Those researchers called it the Hawthorne Effect.

The researchers makes it more vivid and explicit that measuring yourself in term of time is very important in wrestling with Alibi.

• Be Action oriented - The more you keep planning to combat with Alibi without inputting actions, the more you keep increasing Alibi's influence on you. Although planning is necessary. But It's good you know that no plan is worth the paper it's printed on unless it start you doing something. 

After making plans and strategizing on things, it's important you ask yourself some agitating questions like:

•  What am I going to do now? 
•  Where can I use this plan/information?
•  When can I use this?
•  Who needs to know this?

After answering those questions, you must set for work at once. You need to let your action speak out loud and clear.

CONCLUSION

A lot of individuals are victim of alibis they give at some point of their life. But knowing those alibis, the causes, solution and acting on overcoming the power of those alibis will really help us become our better self.

So, do all you can to overcome Alibi.

Take responsibility!

Keep moving!

Keep growing!

The best time to start is now because there is no time like the present!

I believe this is helpful in your journey to turn ALIBI, The Creator of Misfortune around for good.

Writer: Omoregha Peter