I just spoke at the convention for Deaf business owners, and I kept asking myself the same critical thinking question: What’s my excuse? These people are deaf and they’re building empires! These amazing people define what mental toughness is all about, and I think we can all learn from them. Watch this short video and see what you think. I’ll look forward to your comments. Steve Siebold

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Steve Siebold
flagabigmouth@gmail.com
Author and Professional Speaker since 1997. Past Chairman of the National Speakers Association's Million Dollar Speakers Group. Author of 11 books with 1.4 million copies in print.

11 thoughts on “What’s Your Excuse?”

  1. When I see and hear successful people with challenges I don’t have such as being deaf or blind or missing body parts, I’m inspired in two ways. The first is the inspiration they give to me from their own success and the feeling of joy I have for them and what they’ve done.

    The second is the motivation it gives me to look at myself and see if I’m deaf or blind or missing something in myself or other people that I need to recognize to become more successful than I am.

    Thank you for the reflection.

    Mike

  2. Steve,

    A big inspired thanks to you for this and ALL of your messages. The world is a better place because of what you’re doing–even if there’s only a certain percentage of the population who will listen. (Which always astonishes me.)

    All the best,
    Lindit’ Hopson
    (A successful former member of your Mental Toughness for Weight Control program.)

  3. Hi Pablo,

    This reminds me of an old Indian quote “Give this man a fish, he will eat today. But TEACH him HOW to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

    I would love to do the captions on the video myself. Its just the way things are set up. I do not have the capability to caption other people’s video on their websites. The videos belong to them and they own the access and copyrights.

    However, I am willing and able to be part of the solution by offering my expertise and TEACH people HOW to do their own captioning, just like Steve TAUGHT HOW to practice World Class Thinking. Its easy to do and does not cost much. Then from there, it can become a routine protocol. 😉

  4. Hello Steve,

    Thank you for such an inspiring keynote speech at BCED in Houston. I was able to enjoy it through interpreters and computer assisted real-time translation.

    But your video is not captioned. You see captions on television in bars, gyms and know what people are saying in a noisy background. In addition to myself and about 79 other people, there are 36,999,920 who are not able to understand your message. With a small investment and world class approach, I can guarantee that adding captions will expand your audience by more than 10%!!! Go to http://www.captions.org and you will see what I mean. And there are not only a list of service providers, but also a list of online resources to help you caption it yourself. YouTube and Google announced their new “instant” captioning feature about six months ago.

    Let me know if you have any questions.

    Jim House

  5. Steve,

    I am Deaf myself and I was one of these Deaf people who attended this convention! It was an eye opener for me!

    And you made me realize-that there is no excuse! Whether you are Deaf or Not you can do anything you put your mind to it!

    I used to think that its someone’s elses responsibility to make my life better such as someone else’s responsibility to add captions, someone else’s responsibility to provide sign language interpreters, someone else’s responsibility to make my life easier, but after listening to you-I realized, that I am the only one who is responsible for my own life. I need to get mentally tough and do everything I need to do to improve my life and the life of others like me.

    There are no excuses!

    Thank you Steve for teaching me, inspiring me and showing me the way to become mentally tough-its the only way to succeed in business and life!

  6. Steve-

    Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of this event on Saturday. I was absolutely humbled by these great individuals. How inspiring it was to see these champions pull together and create an event for their own community. Like you I left asking myself, “What’s my excuse?”

  7. I understand your point, Steve, and those are the motivated ones – not the deaf ones not mentally tough like most people. Also, they have their excuse days like you like me like everyone.

    Your point though is more than what’s in an excuse and why – we can all come up with lame reasons for sluggishness and sloth and apathy and wasting valuable time – it has to do with vision and motivation.

    I find inspiration in everything – I don’t act upon it all – but I find it and in my world use it and so do you. So do those people. So do all people who are successful.

    What you do, Steve – what a growing small number of people do and many have done since the mid 1900s – what I do is take this subject out into the world because it’s what we do and in that hope it inspires others to tap into their resources to succeed.

    Just as what you blogged inspired me to post this comment, your words there will be additional inspiration to those – mentally tough – people. Isn’t that one of your purposes.

    AND what they’ve given back to you – I could see it in your face and hear it in your words – is even bigger than perhaps they’ll ever know and that’s the beautiful thing of reciprocity.

    Enjoy, Steve!

    Mike

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