"We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal."
— Robert Brault

There are few things as tragic, or as common, as the slow, steady betrayal of one’s own life.
Not by accident.
Not by oppression alone.
But by something far more insidious: The Grand Excuses.

We know them by heart:

• I have kids.
• I need health insurance.
• I have to be financially secure first.
• It’s not the right time.
• I’m too old.
• I’m too young.
• Other people can do it, but I can’t because ___.

Each one sounds plausible, reasonable, even noble.
And each one is a lie.

Not because circumstances aren't real — they are.
But because for every circumstance named, another human being in the same situation, or worse, has chosen differently.

The Grand Excuses are chimerical: they feel solid, but they evaporate under serious examination. They are the velvet ropes we use to gently, almost lovingly, keep ourselves away from the door marked Courage.

This piece is about dismantling those excuses — not with brutality, but with radical acceptance, deep psychology, and the fierce tenderness you deserve.

Because the hard truth is this:

We make excuses not only out of fear, but also out of greed, and out of a poverty of self-trust, integrity, and humility.

And once we name that clearly, we can begin something better.

I. The Nature of Grand Excuses

Grand Excuses are not small mistakes of logic.
They are profound psychological defense mechanisms: designed to protect us from perceived annihilation.

In addiction psychology, these mechanisms are known:

• Denial ("It’s not that bad.")
• Rationalization ("Other people can quit easily, but my case is different.")
• Projection ("It’s society’s fault I’m stuck.")
• Minimization ("It’s just not the right time yet.")

We manufacture elaborate narratives not because we are foolish, but because the brain is built to preserve homeostasis — to keep us inside the familiar, even if the familiar is killing us.

When we contemplate major change — starting the business, leaving the job, moving across the country, dedicating ourselves to creative work — the amygdala floods us with signals of danger.

And so we grasp for Grand Excuses, because they offer psychological safety.
They allow us to believe we are acting wisely, when in fact we are shrinking from our own life.

II. Fear, Greed, and the Emptiness Within

Let’s be brutally clear:

• Fear is the most obvious source. We fear instability, ridicule, failure.
• Greed is more subtle. We want absolute guarantees: not just to survive, but to thrive without discomfort, to win without risking loss.
• Lack of Inner Qualities is the hardest truth. We lack sufficient self-trust to believe we can survive a storm. We lack integrity to prioritize what is sacred over what is easy. We lack humility to accept beginnerhood, uncertainty, public vulnerability.

This trinity — fear, greed, and inner poverty — conspires to make the Grand Excuses feel not just acceptable, but moral.

"It would be irresponsible to chase my dreams when I have kids."
"It would be selfish to risk financial instability."
"It would be foolish to move toward freedom without knowing the exact outcomes."

We baptize our cowardice as duty.
We canonize our inertia as prudence.
We place our own betrayal on the altar of pragmatism, and call it sacrifice.

But it is not sacrifice.
It is surrender to a ghost army that has no real weapons.

III. Disproving the Grand Excuses

The surest way to dismantle a Grand Excuse is simple: find a counter-example.

• Single parents have started companies, written novels, sailed across oceans.
• People without health insurance have built financial independence through small, cumulative risks.
• People without "perfect security" have left soul-deadening jobs and thrived.

It is not your circumstance that determines your action.
It is your relationship to fear.

This is not an indictment. It is a liberation.

If others have done it — with children, without safety nets, facing real risk — you are free to do it too.

Not without struggle.
Not without cost.
But with the quiet, bone-deep knowledge that it is possible.

IV. Breaking the Spell: Practical Strategies

So how do we dismantle the Grand Excuses without collapsing into self-hatred or nihilism?

You begin by changing your mind-body environment — the way addiction recovery does.

You reset belief not by argument alone, but by experience, regulation, and reflection.

Here are three proven strategies:

1. Connect with Someone Who Has Done It

Neurobiology shows that proximity to possibility reshapes the brain's predictive models.
When you see, hear, touch the life of someone who has crossed the bridge, your mind loosens its death grip on impossibility.

Find them.
Interview them.
Listen more than you speak.

2. Read a Biography of Someone Who Has Done It

Stories organize the nervous system.
They offer the brain a template: Here is what survival looks like on the other side.

Choose one story — not of a genius or a titan, but of someone who reminds you of yourself.

Annotate it.
Trace their moments of collapse and recovery.
Notice how fear was present — and yet action continued.

3. Play the “So What?” Game

Fear escalates because the mind refuses to walk a threat to its conclusion.

Practice asking yourself:

"If the worst happens... so what?"

Example:

• I lose my job.
• So what?
• I scramble for freelance work or a part-time gig.
• So what?
• I have to live smaller for a year.
• So what?
• I am still alive. I am still becoming who I am meant to be.

Train yourself to face the monsters, not just flinch from their shadows.

So often our inaction is based on a highly improbable worst case scenario. "I can't quit my job because then if my house burned down in a fire I'd have no means to rent."

Yes. I know. Some people's houses do burn down in fires.

I'm just suggesting that it's not as likely you'll encounter that situation as this one:

"I'm old and I've not long to live and when I look back, I'm not sure I made a positive difference that will make the world better for my children. I focused on their financial wellbeing over the society and planet they'd have to contend with when I prioritised."

Clarity.

As I've written elsewhere the human brain is notoriously bad at assessing risk.

V. Radical Acceptance: The Final Medicine

Radical acceptance does not mean resignation.
It means accepting the true price of freedom — and accepting your fear without letting it rule you.

It means saying:

"Yes, I am afraid. Yes, I want guarantees. Yes, I have children and bills and doubts.
And still, I will not abandon myself."

Because abandoning yourself is not safety.
It is a slow death.

And you were made for more.

VI. Mapping Your Excuse Landscape

Before you can uproot your Grand Excuses, you must name them with savage honesty.

This requires something rare: the willingness to inventory your own betrayals without flinching.

Take a sheet of paper.

Write down every major longing you’ve had over the last five years:

• I wanted to start my own studio.
• I dreamed of traveling for a year.
• I longed to leave my soul-crushing job.
• I wanted to paint, sing, teach, heal.

Now, for each longing not pursued, write the reason you gave yourself.

Not the neat version. The real one.

Then ask:

• Was it truly an immovable barrier?
• Or was it a Grand Excuse in ceremonial robes?

You will feel resistance here. That’s good. It means you’re getting close.

The work of freeing yourself begins with calling your own bluff.

VII. Fear Mapping: Name and Shrink the Monsters

Fear thrives when it remains amorphous.
It withers when it is made specific.

Create a "Fear Map" for one dream you still secretly hold.

1. Name the Dream (e.g., Quit my job to open a craft studio)
2. List the Top 5 Fears
   (e.g., What if I can't afford rent? What if my family thinks I’m a fool? What if no one comes?)
3. Play the "So What?" Game on Each One
   • What if I can't afford rent?
   • So what?
   • I could get a part-time job, move into a smaller place, or rent a room.
   • What if no one comes?
   • So what?
   • I adjust. I offer online workshops. I pivot.

By dragging the fear into the cold light of reason, you remove its claws.

Neurobiologically, this act engages the prefrontal cortex — the seat of strategic thinking — instead of letting the amygdala (fear center) drive the bus.

Fear does not need to be eliminated.
It needs to be named, scaled, and walked through.

VIII. The Inner Qualities You Must Cultivate

External barriers can often be solved tactically.
Internal poverty, however, requires cultivation.

There are three qualities without which you will remain trapped:

1. Self-Trust

Self-trust is not the belief that you will succeed.
It is the belief that you can survive your own failures.

Without it, every setback will feel like death.
With it, failure becomes simply a bend in the path.

How to build it:

• Keep small promises to yourself.
• Act before you feel “ready.”
• Track moments you coped with difficulty and survived.

2. Integrity

Integrity means living in accordance with your values — not your conveniences.

Without integrity, you will default to the path of least resistance.
You will call your own cowardice "being responsible."

How to build it:

• Define your values in writing.
• Audit decisions weekly: "Was this choice aligned with who I say I am?"

3. Humility

Humility is the hardest medicine.
It means accepting that you will not be the best, the fastest, the most admired.
You will be human: clumsy, awkward, doubted.

Without humility, you will postpone action until you can guarantee admiration.
You will become a prisoner of appearances.

How to build it:

• Take action badly.
• Get used to imperfection.
• Let yourself be seen beginning.

IX. The Silent Wreckage of Excuse-Making

Every Grand Excuse carries a hidden cost.

It is not just that you stay in a job you hate.
It is that your spirit atrophies.

It is not just that you delay the project another year.
It is that you teach yourself you are not to be trusted.

Every time you choose the Grand Excuse, you become smaller.

You narrow your capacity for joy, adventure, aliveness.

And it happens so slowly, you may not notice — until you wake up one morning, embalmed in routine, unable to remember the last time you felt genuinely alive.

The world will not punish you for this.

It will reward you.

It will give you polite applause. A gold watch. A pension. A plaque.

And you will know — even if no one else does — that you betrayed yourself.

X. A Manifesto for No Longer Betraying Yourself

If you have read this far, something fierce in you is still alive.

So here is a simple manifesto:

• I will recognize fear, but I will not obey it.
• I will see greed in my desire for guarantees, and choose the richness of the unknown instead.
• I will not allow my social position to become an alibi for my cowardice.
• I will build self-trust by keeping promises to myself.
• I will live by my values, not by the imagined judgments of others.
• I will walk through humiliation, failure, confusion — without making them into reasons to quit.
• I will refuse to offer my life on the altar of plausibility.

Because I am not here to survive respectably.

I am here to burn brightly, and to leave behind a life that could only have been mine.

Final Invitation

Look at your life today.

Draw a line from the Grand Excuses you’ve accepted to the dreams you’ve abandoned.

Then — gently, fiercely — choose one.

Just one.

Drag it out into the light.
Map the fear.
Shrink the monsters.
Take one ridiculous, shaky, radical action in its service.

The road to becoming yourself is paved with ten thousand tiny mutinies.

Begin.

The Only Real Question

At the end of all the Grand Excuses, one real question remains:

Will you live inside your fear, or will you live inside your heart?

There is no perfect moment.
No final security.
No absolute readiness.

There is only the choice, repeated daily:

Betray yourself.
Or become yourself.

Ten months from now, you will look back.
Either at a life shrunken by excuses.
Or at a life widened, terrified, magnificent in its imperfection.

The door is before you.

Choose.