Catching Up With Wayne Dyer: Excuses Begone

On Changing Life-Long Thinking Habits

Ana Hays interviews Wayne Dyer

Hays: So Wayne, your seminar in October is entitled Excuses Begone. What are yours?

Dyer: There are a lot of them. When I wrote Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life, I found that there’s really nothing out there about changing life-long thinking habits. Excuses like, I can’t afford it. I’m too old. I’m too fat.

Hays: So how are you finding ways to change those excuse thoughts?

Dyer: I’ve come up with an “excuses begone paradigm.” If you really are interested in getting rid of excuses you’ll find that most of the thoughts you have are not true. They won’t hold up to the simple question – is this true? We tend to believe our thoughts are true. But when you examine whether your thought that something isreally difficult or risky, there is just as much of a chance that the opposite thought is true. If that’s the case you have a choice. Why not think thoughts that could hold up to being true?

Hays: So if you are someone like me who thinks “I’m too old and no one will want to marry me,” how would you encourage someone to change that thought?

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Dyer: Well Hays, how can you be 100 percent certain that something like that is true? That’s a mind virus – you get to a certain age, you’ll never find a partner. The fact is that people your age find partners all the time. Why not look at the reverse of that thought. And then ask yourself, where did that thought come from? Most of all the excuses that we have are cultural things we’ve grown up with – someone is too old to do something. You’ll begin to discover that you’ve been holding onto a whole catalog of ideas that don’t hold up.

Then ask yourself what if it was impossible for you not to think that thought? How would you feel and what would be the impact? Almost always when someone examines that, they discover that they feel freer, happier and more content.

And the next part of the paradigm is to come up with a rational reason to change. My son has the habit of not getting up in the morning. He sleeps till noon. But when he’s here on Maui and there are waves, he wants to surf. He gets up at 4 a.m. He has a rational reason to change. Figure out a rational reason to change. If you are going to think thoughts that aren’t true, at least think thoughts that are going to work for you.

Hays: Our upcoming issue is about whether Maui will shift to a green culture. What are your thoughts on going green?

Dyer: We have to abolish all the excuses for not going green. To me not going green is very much like not respecting your body, which houses your soul. If you mistreat the body, pour poisons into it, you no longer have a temple to house your soul. Well, the same thing is true when you extend it to the land. It’s not like we are in this environment, we are connected to the environment. You cannot separate one from the other. You cannot separate you from the air you breathe or the food you eat.

To me going green is the same thing as eating healthy. If you don’t have a temple in your heart, you will never find your heart in the temple. It’s about making this place called Earth a temple and treating it with the respect that anything that is sacred deserves. I don’t think about what the earth is going to be like for the next generation. I think about it for the next 100,000 years. The Native Americans have this wonderful saying, “When we walk up on the earth we always place our feet very carefully because we know the faces of our unborn generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. And we never forget them.” Our problem today is that we’ve forgotten them. We have a responsibility for all those who come after us.

Ana Hays is the marketing communications manager for Hospice of the Valley in San Jose. Her writing has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul and other publications. She can be reached at 650.255.3696 or visit www.writeonwriters.net.

Reprinted with permission

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