Tomorrow Starts Today: 5 Tips to Attack Your Excuses

6 min readNov 8, 2019

Do you ever feel like you’re grasping to find your drive? Just coasting through life one snooze button at a time? Cowering to that inner voice inside telling you “10 more minutes” or “I’ll start tomorrow.”? The snooze button becomes self-sabotaging. I get it, it’s a vicious cycle that I personally have fallen victim to. Tomorrow turns into the best day to do something you don’t want to do today. The “tomorrows” stack up, and so do the lb’s. Contrary to popular belief, motivation itself is not enough to fuel your journey. To paraphrase David Goggins, motivation may wake you up early to go on that morning run, but drive is what gets you out the door when your face gets smacked with that bone chilling winter wind. Drive is what separates you from being ordinary, choosing to be uncomfortable in sacrifice for greatness. That’s it — choosing. It’s a choice and one that only you can make. For The Driven, tomorrow starts today. Your excuses become fuel, your routine becomes unbreakable, and you start waking up before your alarm ready to slay the day!

Your day is yours, choose your target. I personally wake up and run every morning. Physical activity in general has numerous mental and physical benefits. Whether you are a morning person or a night owl, the gym is a perfect target for your drive.

BENEFITS OF AM WORKOUTS

Mental Boost

o A British Journal of Sports Medicine study found that exercising in the morning improves attention, visual learning, and decision making.

Endorphins All Day

o The “runner’s high” is a real thing, those endorphins your brain releases will be combatting stress all day long.

Optimal Fat Burn

o A study published in EBioMedicine shows that morning workouts are ideal for burning fat. (if you are looking to burn fat this is my favorite product.)

Sleep Better

o Studies also show you will fall asleep quicker and have a deeper sleep the evening after a morning workout session!

No Excuses

o Mornings are your time, you get in your workout before any potential distractions can get in your way.

BENEFITS OF PM WORKOUTS

Strength & Endurance Increased

o Strength and endurance are increased later in the day vs mornings.

Body Temp is Up

o Later in the day your body and muscles are warmed up and in turn you will have better workouts.

Decompress

o After a long day of work and stress, many people crave gym sessions to decompress before they go home.

Drive is an endless internal journey fought and won inside yourself. Every day. You are tasked with navigating the never-ending excuses and roadblocks flying at you on your journey to the best version of yourself. But don’t worry, I’m with you… You can call me Han Solo. Hop in the Millennium Falcon and let’s do this.

1. RECOGNIZE AND ATTACK YOUR EXCUSES

In today’s world of comfort and immediate gratification we are constantly searching for the silver bullet to success, as if Amazon Prime will deliver it Same Day. Negative Ghost Rider. Believe it or not, the solution is in plain sight, ask any successful person how they got so successful and they will tell you: it starts with you. If you want something bad enough, you will be accountable and painfully honest with yourself. You will stop looking at excuses as roadblocks and start seeing them as challenges. Close your eyes and walk through every single step, and potential misstep, of your journey through a successful day, start to finish. What has stopped you from working out in the morning, or hitting the gym after work? How can you overcome that? Were you missing one of your running shoes? Did you misplace your keys? Did you leave yourself enough time? Did you forget something? I’ve found that only by taking an honest look at your excuses can you truly prepare a strategy to attack them.

2. PREPARE

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin

Look at preparation as owning the day and not letting the day own you. You planning, and thus taking control, will put you in a place destined for success rather than scrambling and inevitably quitting. With preparation, the odds stay in your favor; you are stacking tomorrow’s deck for you to win from the moment you get up to the moment you triumphantly arrive home. To shine light on this, I will briefly walk you through my routine for a workday. With a sleeping wife and two sleeping kids, I can’t risk waking anyone up, so I lay everything out the night before. When my alarm sounds, I’m like Usain Bolt out of the blocks (except quiet like a ninja!). I have everything prepared for me to go the moment I wake up: I lay out my breakfast bar and Mdrive to take, my running shoes and gym clothes are ready to put on, and my work clothes are neatly folded in my gym bag. Everything is staged for me to wake up and go. I visualized my obstacles and prepared myself a tactical plan to overcome them.

3. EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Often the excuses that occur the most are the ones we didn’t see coming. Excuse? Challenge Accepted! If you want anything bad enough, you are waiting and ready to roundhouse kick these excuses out of your way! If you think it could be raining for your run, pack rain gear. If traffic leaves you with very little time to work out, have a quick HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout in your back pocket. If you forgot to pack workout clothes, have a spare in your trunk.

4. BUILD A BUDDY SYSTEM

Most of us would rather let ourselves down than let our friends or family down. The disappointment and flack you will receive for hitting snooze and bailing on your buddy is a valuable insurance policy on the path to your success. Scheduling workouts with a great friend holds you both accountable and adds a level of comradery to the grind!

5. SET SMART GOALS & CONTINUALLY REVISIT

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas Edison

Anything worth working for will not be easy and will certainly not be obtained overnight. How you go about setting goals and expectations is critically important to sustainable growth. You want your goals to be difficult enough that you are pushing yourself, but not so daunting your mind or body breaks down leaving you feeling defeated week after week. I believe the SMART method is one of the best goal setting processes around: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound. Growth is a process, and every day you will face different obstacles and potential excuses. Stay driven and continually revisit your routine. By attacking your excuses and relentlessly staying driven, you are already better than yesterday. Tomorrow starts today.

Stay Driven my friends,
Taylor J. Ford

PS: I am in the foxhole with you here. I am fighting for you to be the person you want to be! There is enough Drive to go around for all of us, go get what’s yours! Please keep us posted on your journey through social media by using #staydriven so we can be there to cheer you on!

Connect with us on Instagram!