The Secret of the Shadow by Debbie Ford Page A

complaints, and our discontent—often become our excuse for not manifesting our most magnificent selves. Our dramas take up so much space in our lives that most of us wouldn’t know ourselves without them. In order to disengage from our dramas and step beyond our limited perspectives, we need to see what we get out of holding on to them.
    A quick process you can use to see if you are making an excuse is to ask yourself the following questions.
    1. Is this the truth, or is this an excuse that I have heard before?
    2. Would [name a person you admire and respect] see this as the truth or as an excuse?
    3. Am I responsible for this choice, or am I making others, God, or life responsible?
    Asking yourself this series of questions should help you to determine if you are justifying the condition of your life by making 93
    T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w excuses. Let me give you an example. One of my favorite excuses used to be that I was too busy to have fun and take time off. I would hear myself constantly complaining as I told my dramatic story about how much work I had to do. Then one day my girlfriend Danielle cornered me and asked, “Debbie, who is in charge of making your schedule?” Although I knew that I was the one who was in charge of my schedule, I had a thousand excuses for why I had to stay so busy: “It’s my publisher’s fault. It’s my sister’s fault.
    It’s my publicist’s fault. It’s my staff’s fault. They need me.” All of these excuses left me feeling powerless and like a huge victim.
    Unquestioningly, I accepted these excuses as the truth. Then I stopped and asked myself, “Is this the truth, or is this an excuse I’ve heard before?” My answer was, clearly, “I have heard this too many times before.” Then I thought about my friend Cheryl and asked myself, “Would she see this as the truth or as an excuse?” I knew immediately that Cheryl would support me in seeing that no one in the world could make my well-being a priority but me and that I was using other people as an excuse not to take responsibility for my time. Next I asked myself, “Am I making others, God, or life responsible for my circumstances?” My answer? “Absolutely.” It was then that I realized that all my reasons were just some form of an excuse that left me feeling like a powerless victim of my own life.
    I realized that if I wanted to have more fun and leisure in my life, all I needed to do was stop making excuses and take responsibility for my choices. And so I did.
    Recently, while giving a lecture on excuses for participants in one of my coaching programs, I had yet another opportunity to examine where I might be using excuses in my life. I felt sure that 94
    r e c l a i m i n g y o u r p o w e r I had blasted through most of what had held me back and kept me repeating familiar patterns, but I looked anyway. Then, a week into my inquiry, I began to feel a cold coming on. My cold symp-toms always seemed to be the same—a scratchy throat and a tired body. I knew those feelings all too well. It seemed I was always catching some kind of cold that would stop me in my tracks and land me in bed for a few days. Sometimes I would try to stop it from coming on by filling my body with every known supplement, and at other times I would just surrender to it and allow myself to be sick and stay at home. This particular week was an exceptionally busy one, and I felt I couldn’t afford to be sick. In the middle of my usual regimen of taking vitamin C and astragalus, I had a startling realization: Getting a cold was my excuse. I was blown away. Suddenly the lights went on and I could see clearly that every time I needed rest—every time I had too much on my plate or too many commitments to keep—I would get a cold. This was my excuse, my reason, my alibi—my way of letting everyone know I was out of commission and couldn’t take on any more.
    Most of all, though, catching a cold served as a billboard that