I’m sure many of you are familiar with the issue of making excuses for everything. I don’t just mean excusing your unfinished chores by saying “I have ADHD”, I mean excuses and fabrications in general - at work, you might say you’re nearly finished with a project, but really you’re halfway done at best, at home you might say you couldn’t start the dishwasher because of how angry your pregnant wife was at you for choosing the wrong program on the washing machine, so you were scared to start the dishwasher - fully ignoring the fact that you were supposed to start the dishwasher BEFORE even being confronted about the washing machine. The last one is a stupid example, but it happened an hour ago and it’s a pattern I hate about myself.
If you’ve had a similar issue and identified it, what has helped you improve yourself? I may never be perfect to the point I’ll get everything done that I need to, but I’d like to at least stop making stupid excuses that just bring up fights that could’ve been avoided.
Try, “I have no excuse,” and only explain when prompted. You may desire to be heard, but you can explain yourself after the apologies have concluded.
For me it helped to address why I made them in the first place. When I was younger (and now), the real reason was always that my executive function just needed more cooldown time or at least a different sort of activity than the one that I was lying about. That wasn’t language I had access to at the time. The closest thing I had was “I can’t”, which adults never let me say because it was always in relation to things they’d seen me do before, so they couldn’t fathom that I couldn’t do it then. So I had to make something up. But in my current adult life, actually, people recognize what my struggles are and understand if I just say what really did happen (executive function misfire). Or if I don’t know them that well I just say something personal came up, which is what an executive function misfire is, no lie, they just aren’t privy to stuff that personal.
You can also amend something you’ve just said. “oh I’m like almost done with that project” (pause for a beat, realize that’s a lie) “ok thinking about it for a second, more like half done.”
Work on saying the truth the first time, but in the interim don’t double down.
I don’t make excuses anymore. It’s very tiring and I prefer to just face the consequences. People seem to respect me more because of it.
I read a book, “Courage to be disliked”.
I am too lazy to type out how it relates to your question, but give it a shot.
