All The Excuses We Tell Ourselves

I recorded a short audio version of this for anyone who prefers to listen.

All the excuses we tell ourselves.

I wrote that phrase down for a reason. It landed hard enough that it earned a place in my never-ending Google Sheet — the one where I collect words and ideas that make me stop and think.

Identity and ego are tricky things. They’re responsible for the greatest things we achieve, and just as responsible for putting roadblocks directly in our path. Stopping forward momentum before it ever really begins.

I experience this. You experience this. We all have moments where we can’t quite figure out how to tell ourselves the right story about who we are and what we’re capable of.

And truthfully, that’s okay.

As long as you know you’re doing it.

As long as you can recognize that there are other narratives available to you.

As long as you understand that while this moment might be the right place to be, you are still responsible for shifting into the next gear when the time is right.

When the wind starts to pick up.

When you know it’s time to move.

If you’re unable to command that kind of agency for yourself, that’s usually a signal — not a failure. It’s a sign that something needs to be looked at more deeply before pushing forward.

I can say all of this only because I’ve spent a lot of time in that rut.

A lot of time knowing the solution and being unable to execute it.

And it almost always came back to the same thing: the story I was telling myself.

That story is the single thing that allowed me to grow beyond guilt for charging someone for a phone call. It’s what allowed me to grow beyond over-delivering to justify my worth. It’s what allowed me to realize that rushing to solve problems for people who aren’t ready to solve them themselves doesn’t actually help anyone.

What I kept noticing — across clients and conversations — was that people weren’t stuck because they lacked insight. They were stuck because they didn’t know where to begin.

They were thoughtful. Self-aware. Doing the work.

But without orientation, everything felt heavier than it needed to be.

Adding more frameworks didn’t help. In many cases, it made things worse. More to hold. More to juggle. Still no clear starting point.

That’s what led me to build the Blind Spot Finder.

Not as a personality test. Not as a diagnostic tool.

But as a way to surface what’s actually in the way before we start trying to fix everything at once.

The goal isn’t complexity.

It’s clarity.

Because complexity is very often a way of hiding from the real work.

Clean paths tend to feel unimpressive on paper. They’re often too simple to feel sophisticated. But they move people more reliably than anything ornate ever could.

The Blind Spot Finder is version one. I haven’t run enough people through it yet to make bold claims about outcomes — and saying that out loud matters to me. This wasn’t built from certainty. It was built from repeated exposure to the same constraint and a willingness to respond to it honestly.

If you’re feeling stuck despite doing the work, it may not be because you need more insight.

You may just need a clearer place to begin.

This is Ground Control

Patrick

If you’re curious, you can explore it here:

Blind Spot Finder: https://tally.so/r/obeOlx

Ground Control Podcast: Building the Blind Spot Finder - When Soul Met Systems