The Floor From Hell. A Blown Radiator, and Why Reasons Still Don’t Matter

Posted September 4Sep 4

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If you want something in life, you’re either going to find a way to get the result or you’re going to come up with a reason you don’t have it.

Reasons sound fancy.
They sound valid.
Sometimes they even look like noble sacrifices.

But let’s be honest here, reasons are just excuses dressed up in fancier clothes. And excuses don’t paint walls, rip up floors, or fix broken-down cars.

Craig and I know this firsthand. For almost a month now, our evenings and weekends have been swallowed whole by our new house. Not just the fun, HGTV version of “new house” either. I’m talking about the gritty, sweaty, paint-in-your-hair, knees-swollen, back-screaming, what-the-hell-were-we-thinking kind of renovation. Just the two of us. No TV crews, no experts swooping in with a miracle fix. Just us, a pile of tools, and a vision + Youtube.

We ripped up floors, carpets, tile. We painted every damn wall in that house. We sweated it out through broken air conditioning, cursed our way through the “floor from hell,” and said a prayer or two when the asbestos scare came back clear. Every single one of these things could have been a reason. And let’s be real, they would have been good reasons.

And we did all that while still maintaining our day jobs.

But reasons don’t get the work done.
Results do.

And that’s what we committed to.

Because in the middle of that chaos, Rowan ending up in the ER with pneumonia and a nasty kidney infection, our kids’ cars deciding to unionize and break down all at once, and our Hummer blowing a radiator for good measure.
We could have stopped.
We could have thrown our hands in the air and said, “Well, we’ll never hit our deadline.” But we didn’t. We got our asses back to work, sore knees and all.

That’s commitment.
Not to the process, not even to the endless list of tasks, but to the result.

Les Brown once said something at a seminar over 20 years ago that I’ve never let go of. He said, “Mama always said: reasons or results.” That’s it.
Black and white.
Either you deliver results or you deliver reasons.
There’s no in-between.

And in today’s world, I see too many people handing over reasons like candy at Halloween. We live in a culture that celebrates excuses more than effort. Participation trophies, “no child left behind,” and a thousand other ideas that sounded good at the start but ended up robbing us of something vital: grit. Resilience. That deep knowing that if you want something, you’re going to have to sweat for it.

What we have instead is entitlement. A belief that things should just show up for us. That the universe, or our parents, or society, or whoever the hell we’re pointing the finger at today, owes us something. And when it doesn’t show up, what do we get? Depression.
Anxiety.
Loneliness.
Anger.
Because purpose has been stripped from our bones.

Purpose comes from doing.
From creating.
From getting your hands dirty, tearing up the carpet, scraping paint off your elbows, and looking back at a room you just transformed with your own sweat and cuss words.
Purpose doesn’t come from being handed something.
It doesn’t come from reasons.
It comes from results.

Complacency is the breeding ground of destruction. You want to open the door for trouble in your life?

Stay complacent.
Stay comfortable.
Keep choosing reasons over results.
That’s when the enemy sneaks in.
That’s when you’ll find yourself reaching for the bottle, numbing with drugs, caught in drama, cycling through trauma, wondering why the hell you can’t feel peace. It’s because you’ve traded your birthright of purpose for the counterfeit comfort of reasons.

Now, don’t get me wrong, results aren’t clean. They’re messy. They demand more from you than you thought you had to give. They make you cry, sweat, limp, swear, and sometimes crawl. Results require you to look at the floor from hell and say, “Fine, I’ll see your challenge and I’ll raise you a solution.” Results require you to see past the immediate discomfort to the vision of what you’re building.

James and the Giant Peach taught this better than most personal development books. James’s parents tell him while they’re watching clouds: “Try looking at it a different way.” That’s perspective. That’s resilience. That’s what it means to get a result.

Because the truth is, every problem has a solution. Always. The only question is whether you’re willing to dig for it. To demand it. To get uncomfortable enough to see it.

Those who succeed in life don’t succeed because they had fewer problems. They succeed because they refused to take reasons from themselves or anyone else. They decided the result mattered more. They decided that their vision was worth the scraped knuckles, the ER visits, the broken radiators, the fatigue, and the sore backs. They stayed committed to the outcome, not just the dream.

You want to know why you don’t have what you say you want?
The money, the house, the marriage, the body, the peace, the connection?
It’s not because life is unfair.
It’s because you’ve gotten more comfortable with your reasons than you are committed to your result.

And let me tell you, nothing tastes worse than the bitterness of knowing you let a reason keep you from a result you could have had.

So, here’s the deal, we all get to choose.
Reasons or results.
Excuses or progress.
Comfort or purpose.
If you want the life you keep saying you want, then stop selling yourself on the lie of reasons.
Step up.
Get messy.
Push through.
Commit to the vision, commit to the outcome, and commit to the result.

Because at the end of the day, reasons don’t build houses.
Results do.

Happy Sunday ya’ll!

I want to hear from you…what’s the vision, the process, or the outcome you’re committed to no matter what? Drop it in the comments and let’s declare it together.