(ThyBlackMan.com) As an Advanced Life Coach, I often teach that life is about 20% of what happens to you and 80% of how you see it and what you do about it. Even so, I see people all around me half stepping through life. Mediocrity has become the norm. Excellence has become the enemy. Poverty has become the excuse. If you are lazy, it’s up to you to change that. If you are broke, it’s up to you to change that. If you are unhealthy or overweight, it’s up to you to change that. If you are smoking marijuana to mask your depression, it’s up to you to change that. But one thing is for sure. Self-sabotaging behavior never helps anyone to rise to any standard of excellence.
Excuses are not your friends, they are your enemies. Excuses are nothing but reasons why you fail and ways to make yourself feel better about failure. If the life you want is not the life you have, that’s your fault. The blame game of scapegoating often partners with excuses. So far too many people blame somebody else for their problems. You may have been victimized, but you don’t have to remain a victim forever. Believe me, I know. And yet you were not created to be a victim of life. The process begins to reverse itself once you make the decision, without excuses. I don’t say you are “waiting on God” because that is used as a modern-day as well. You just don’t know what to do, won’t find out or you are too lazy or afraid to do it.
Police brutality is real. Systematic racism is real. Depression is real. Racial profiling is real. Biochemical depression is real. Addictions are real. But none of them have the power to completely stop you unless you believe they do and unless you keep making excuses. You even have to be careful that some of the treatments or would-be solutions for these problems do not keep the problems in place themselves. Case in point, the 12 point program for alcohol addiction. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Or at least one of the dumbest. There is no way you should be confessing over your life that you are an alcoholic and that you will always be an alcoholic. That is bull.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If that is true, you need to make sure that YOU are in charge of the thoughts in your head and the thoughts in your heart. Not somebody programming you to move into a different part of the cave.
As a cancer survivor myself, when I speak to cancer patients, I make sure to tell them they need to prepare to fight or just give up and stop playing. There is very little in the middle. There is very little in the way of excuses for not doing your due diligence research. If you think doctors know everything, find one who says he does and I will show you a liar. Most doctors I have ever met are wise enough to say they don’t know half of everything. Ironically, many of them don’t even keep up-to-date based on the newest treatments and medical solutions. That is not to say all doctors are bad. Doctors have a toolbox, not the only toolbox. And they are limited in what they can do. So yet again, it’s up to you.
Stop letting people think for you. Whether it regards your health, your finances, your mental fitness or your relationships. That includes your friendly neighborhood Pastor. You have to think. There’s no way around it because you were given a brain to use it, not just to have other people do all the thinking for you. Pressure makes a diamond and iron sharpens iron.
Some time ago I wrote an article objecting to the increase in minimum wage on a national level. One of the premises of my article was that you are supposed to keep being progressive, rising higher and bettering yourself. You don’t need the government to take care of you, or you shouldn’t. You don’t need an employer to guarantee you a higher minimum wage just so you can use that as a career wage, never rising to the occasion of your potential. If you are not a child, you should not need to be taken care of. You do it and do it the way it needs to be done.
Some of the things that may help you now can become a crutch later and create cycles of poverty, or even poverty and entitlement mentality. Free stuff sounds great until people come to realize the promoters of free stuff are enabling acceptable poverty. Nobody really owes you anything and you owe yourself everything. If you ask me, the EBT food stamp program, for example, should be completely revised as a partnership plan to help people as they help themselves. On day one those who apply for food stamps should get 100% of them. Three month later, it should be reduced by 25%. Three months after that, it should be reduced by another 25%. That means six months in the person is helping himself or herself at 50% and the government is helping them at 50%. By the nine month mark, it should be cut down to only 25% of the food stamps. And by the end of the year, it should be cut down to zero. Some of you may not like what I’m saying, but this type of partnership program is not a crutch, it helps people to stand and motivates them to do so.
I am very fortunate, and I am not bragging when I say that everything I have is paid for. Because I worked hard and smart to have things that way. Nobody gave me loans or free money or inheritance or a fat pension plan. I didn’t ride on unemployment until it ran out. Some of you really just need to have some self-respect, self-determination and self expectation, all at a higher level. The wisdom of life is not about “getting over”.
So here we are in 2024. And the question becomes whether or not you will keep blaming other people and expecting other people to think for you and take care of you? Or will you do it yourself? Wisdom is about accountability, responsibility, learning from our mistakes, learning from the mistakes of others and moving forward as we should. Not just as we want to. That means having a plan. That means making sacrifices. And that means some of the things you want are going to have to wait.
Before my mom passed a while back, she told me to raise my sons to be strong men. She said a man should never be a sorry man. And in the 54 years she was married to my dad, he was a strong man who paid his bills and stood on his own. With her help, they took care of five children. Today I have to say what concerns me about the work ethic of so many people, particularly in the black community. Dragging your feet. Making excuses. Trying to get over on others. Trying to blame everybody else except the person in the mirror. And then getting discouraged when you cannot get away with all of it. Stop. Don’t just wake up, rise up.
So if you want to be sorry, lazy, hustling or always trying to get over, you are hurting yourself. If you want to feel that you are entitled to people giving you things, or owing you things that we have to pay for, you are wrong. At the very least, if you don’t want to contribute to society, you should take care of yourself. Nobody else should have to do it. Stop half-stepping through life. And that includes all the women who voluntarily had intercourse, but now want to get rid of their unborn children because babies are inconvenient. Reproductive rights, deadbeat rights, lack-of-accountability rights or just excuses? Likewise, men, take care of your children.
Every day as I drive through the city, I see homeless people standing there with signs, asking for food. I have participated in several “feed the hungry” programs, but it became discouraging when I saw people just sit around all day until we pulled up with food. Then they got in line like slaves, got their food and sat back down for the rest of the day. I see tent cities under the highways. I see people laying in the parks and living under the bridges. Apparently a lot of people don’t know their value and their potential. They were not created for that. And the current young generation is largely headed in the same direction, especially the young black boys and girls.
Now people too cheap or too lazy to spend the money for their own food, even though they could, are taking advantage of the food programs. People pulling up in Jaguars, BMWs and Cadillacs, only to have their trunk filled up with food free of charge. But it’s not free because my tax dollars are paying for that food. And if I have to pay for mine, you should have to pay for yours.
Everybody needs help at one time or another. But it is the stamina, purpose, self-determination, self expectation, planning and good character that enables and empowers a person to find his or her own way through life. To achieve. To acquire. To make things as they need to be. So stop counting on somebody else and realize that it’s up to you. Yes YOU! We don’t need any more leeches or parasites to keep draining the system, our communities, the food banks and the charities. If you can do for yourself, you should. Because when it really comes down to it, why should somebody do more for you than you are willing to do for yourself?
Always remember that pressure makes a diamond. So don’t just sit there and be a useless rock.
Staff Writer; Trevo Craw
A Free Thinker, who loves to talk about Politics, Religion, etc. Also, all about uplifting the Black Community even if it doesn’t fit your mindset. One may hit me up at; TrevoCraw@ThyBlackMan.com.