In my role as a counselor, teacher, and parent, I’ve heard many reasons that people use to explain an unhappy existence . . . and almost all of them inevitably fall into one huge category, which I call “excuses.”

The rest of the chapter will introduce you to 18 of the most commonly used ones, along with a brief commentary about each of them. This will give you a primer before you go on to learn the Excuses Begone! method that’s detailed in the rest of the book.

Here they are, in no particular order:

If you were asked, “Does your hand belong to you?” you would naturally say, “Of course.”

But ask neuroscientists the same question and they will turn the question back on you: How do you know it’s your own hand? In fact, how do you know that you have a body? What makes you think you own it? How do you know where your body begins and ends? How do you keep track of its position in space?

Try this little exercise: Imagine there is a straight line running down the middle of your body, dividing it into a left half and a right half. Using your right hand, pat different parts of your body on the right side – cheek, shoulder, hip, thigh, knee, foot. With your finger, trace a line over your right eyebrow and over the right portions of your upper and lower lips.

People have been thinking for thousands of years. Why do we suddenly need a book to tell us how to think?

People have been running, too, for thousands of years. But if you want to be in the Olympics, it’s generally a good idea to get a coach.

Most of us can think really well about one or two parts of a problem at any given moment. The challenge is that most problems are more complicated than that, and what might seem like a good solution at first can end up spawning all kinds of other problems we didn’t expect. Brilliant thinking is meant to take our good thinking abilities and use them to completely think through really complex problems — so we can come up with creations and solutions that we’ll be happy about not only today but five years from now.

My work is to help people think. My clients write books, create innovative solutions, develop brilliant breakthroughs, and endeavor to make the world a better place.

During the last twenty years of working with business leaders to build their personal reputations, and to enhance the profile of their organizations, I created a system for developing intellectual property – ideas.

Not long ago a number of my clients turned the tables on me and suggested I take a little of my own medicine and organize my methodology. I eventually distilled my process down to eleven essential steps. I wrote a draft outline and circulated it among many of my clients, asking if it captured what they had found valuable. With their comments and further refinement, that system is what you now hold in your hands. I call it the Endleofon (END-leo-fahn), an old English word for “eleven.”