And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

Podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this is episode 164. It's titled Wooden Legs and Excuses. And if you're

ready, we'll start the show. Hello all. It's December. Well, if you're listening to this now,

anyway, for all I know for you, it's mid-June. But for me right now,

it's December. I know, because the temperature has dropped. The evenings are dark,

and every single tree in my neighbourhood seems to have been able to spew their leaves all over my back lawn.

I'd go and rake them all up, but... I don't know about you, but it's due to be quite windy this afternoon, and they'll just blow everywhere.

I live on the top of a hill, you see, really high up, really windy, so there's no pointing raking the leaves.

I can't rake the leaves. It's too windy up here, but, you know, what do you expect when the conditions aren't right?

I can't change the weather, and I can't change the altitude in my garden, so there's nothing I can do, is there?

It's not my fault that it's windy. What do you expect to me?

Now then, you might have had some conversations like that yourself at some point in the past,

either being the one listening or the one making the excuses. And this process reminds me

of what a psychiatrist in the 60s named Eric Byrne used to call the wooden leg game.

If you imagine a man with a wooden leg who used this leg

as an explanation for why his life is so unfulfilled. And he says things like, if it wasn't for

this wooden leg, I could have been an athlete. Or when he complains that he's unemployed,

he says, what do you expect from a guy with one leg?

And the wooden leg game can hold us back from enjoying life and feeling fulfilled. And there are many

things that can be your version of a wooden leg. People will say, yes, I have alcohol problems,

but what do you expect from the child of alcoholic parents? Or, of course, I have alcohol problems, but what do you expect from the child of alcoholic

...