Let me share a story with all of you a story that I think may be a great weekend reminder. I remember when I was about 16 years old and some friends of mine invited me to a big kegger.

For anyone who doesn’t know what a “kegger” is, let me give you the quick description. A kegger is when a bunch of high school kids sit around drinking beer out of a keg, get drunk and act like idiots.

I remember that all the hot girls were going to be at that party, and how badly I wanted to go. Despite this, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get myself to go. I had so much fear and anxiety about it, and I couldn’t figure out why.

When my buddy John called me around 7:00 pm to let me know he would be picking me up in an hour to go to that party, I told him I couldn’t go. I didn’t tell him that I had too much fear and anxiety to go. I told him the excuse that I had spent the entire day thinking about and creating, that my Mom wasn’t feeling well so I had to stay home to take care of my sister and brother.

I told him how much it sucked that I couldn’t go. I really sold it, and John believed me. I remember getting off the phone and thinking what a great job I did selling that excuse.

How many times have you sold excuses? You get invited to something, but you create an excuse not to go because of your lack of self-confidence, your lack of social confidence and your mindset.

How many times have you spent the entire day working up the perfect excuse to blow off a social event to which you were invited? What is funny is that when you do this, you will always check in the next day with your friends to see what you missed.

Then, because the mind is very funny in the way it works and tricks itself, you think “Oh man, I could’ve gone to that party. I should have gone. Next time I’m going to do it.”

The truth is that the next time you are going to come up with another excuse. The same thing will happen the time after that.

We make excuses in life because it’s too hard to face our fears. As human beings, we love to make excuses. Facing our fears means we have to leave our comfort zone.

When you get out of your comfort zone, it by definition means that you are going to be uncomfortable. As human beings, we always want to be comfortable.

That is why television is so popular. Watching television allows you to escape into a different world.

The Internet is another great escape. If you ever read comments people post on Internet sites, people are as ballsy as can be because they can be their own “alter ego” and say what they would never have the guts to say in real life.

In order to overcome your fears and excuses, you must go out and do something that takes you out of your comfort zone. There is no way around it.

For some of you, that might mean approaching ten women a day. For others of you, that might mean going out on a date with someone you’ve always wanted to ask out on a date but never have.

if you don’t do something every single day that gets you out of your comfort zone, you’re just going to remain comfortably numb (as Pink Floyd so aptly put it) for the remainder of your life. Let me tell you, time goes by really fast.

That was 31 years ago I made that excuse to my friend John to avoid going to that high school party. While I have obviously gotten over those fears, there are times in my life that I will still bail out of things with some other stupid excuse.