How To Scuttle Your But

The word scuttlebutt is defined in any given dictionary as rumors, stories and gossip not based in fact, and as such is a scourge in our society that deserves to be tossed overboard. Breaking scuttlebutt into two words results in scuttle and butt with the word scuttle meaning to  scamper, scurry.  Dropping one 't' from the word butt results in scuttle being an apt verb to use when getting one’s but out of the way. However, I will be using the definition of the word scuttle as it applies to abandoning or withdrawing from; destroying something or bringing it to an end.

Although but is a small word it's unexamined usage can result in a lot of annoying, frustrating and sometimes down right painful stops in your life.  Often small things can make a big difference and the scuttling of the word but can bring about big changes.  To start with, for a small word, teeny in fact, it has an impressive number of definitions. You may think that you know what the word ‘but’ means but I encourage you to take a closer look. You will want to play close attention because these definitions are very important if you are ever going to get your but handled.

But:

indicating an exception, aside from, barring, besides, excluding, not counting, omitting, outside of, restricting, ruling out, minus, with the exception of, save for, disregarding, passing over, not including, without, although, however, nevertheless, on the other hand, still, though and last but not least, yet.

Now I am going to share with you why butting ought to be left to goats. Not scapegoats, scapegoats are very necessary to the survival of buts, I mean four legged, laundry off the line eating, getting into your garden, hill climbing, milk producing kind of goats. Just so we are clear I am talking about the kind of butting that way too many of us all too often engage in. It is not the butting in kind of butting and it is not the butting out kind of butting. It is the kind of butting that we do when we there is something we need or want but.........

It is amazing what a difference one little letter can make to the meaning of a word. I remember some years ago listening to the actor, Will Smith, in an interview wherein he was relating to the TV host that he almost went broke after his initial rise to fame. He said that he had been very careless with his money and that one day his dad set him down and had a serious talk with him. His father asked him how many cars Will had and responded to Will’s answer with “What do you want all those cars for, you’ve only got one butt? We all have one butt of the double ‘t’ variety. Well, most of us do, the draftsmen attached to the engineering department I worked in through my late teens and early twenties used to say that I didn’t have a butt, just the tops of my legs. I may not have had a big butt but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a lot of “junk in my trunk” in the form of buts. I had all kinds of buts, big buts, little buts, in between buts; I had a plethora of buts. At some point in my life I decided that I really had to take a close look at butting out.

There are the excuse me buts and when one starts to run out of excuses me buts one tends to start grabbing for their butt, butt. We’ve all been eye to eye with a determined salesperson who handles every single but we throw down in their dogged attempts to make a sale. They are masters at handling objections and excuses. When you start running out of buts with a salesman and you really don’t need or want what they are selling the only sensible course of action is to get your butt out of there, it is about the only but they won’t try to take control of.

The sad truth of the matter is that your own but may well be the small thing that is holding you back standing in the way of your living a bigger and better life. A but, or two or maybe more can be the very thing that is standing in the way of your ability to be, do and have what you need and want to be, do and have. Worse still, you use your but to deter another or others from being all they can be and doing all they can do and having all they can have. I would stop here but I’m not quite finished. I do hope you are still with me. I have a bit more to say because I think it vital that you look at how you are using your buts.

If you don’t think you have a ‘but’, I must say those draftsmen almost had me convinced that I didn’t so I find it quite understandable that you may have your head up yours but….I think I can fix that! By the time you are through looking you may well find that you are laughing your but off. If you can laugh several buts off that would be wonderful indeed because they are sabotaging you anyway – useless buts! Some of us don’t know our but from a hole in the ground however it is very important that you are able to differentiate.

Now is where those definitions I laid out come into play. When you need or want something, when you have a dream or a goal you want to get closer to it rather than farther away. You want to make progress not backslide and you want to succeed rather than fail. A misplaced small but deadly misplaced but can set you up for a big loss. It has the potential in fact to cause you a great deal of pain and discomfort. Most of us have, at least once in our journey through life, placed our butt upon something or somewhere that just wasn’t made to be set upon. When that happens, we generally get off our butts rather quickly. The other buts, on the other hand, can hang around for years and years and we barely if ever even notice that they are ill placed.

You would like to have more money, but._________; a fulfilling relationship, but________; more time, but________ and on it goes.  The point is that you want to get closer to something or someone and ‘but’ in fact is taking you farther and farther away from the object of your desire. It omits it, excludes it, restricts it, rules it out, passes over it, does not include it, and you end up going without it or making do with some proximity to it. If you envision a new red car and instead you end up with a rust bucket.  You have only managed to manifest a proximity to a red car. You are left to comfort yourself with the fact that rust is at least a shade of red.

How do I scuttle my but, you ask. The answer to that is quite simple and it is quite simple because it is the truth of the matter, the simple truth. First you must fully understand the definitions of both the word scuttle and the word but. Then you must hold a vision of what it is that you really, really need or want. There is no more effective way of bring ‘buts’ out of the woodwork than a vision because your vision is the software for your mind. Put your vision there and the ‘buts’ will scurry out like rats from wherever it is that they have been hiding. You must stay very still because just like the rats that they are ‘buts’ will scuttle off at the slightest sound or motion. Just observe them and then write them down as they appear. The next step is to look at the consequences of having each ‘but’. What have been or could be the consequences of _________________. This may well result in you laughing your ‘but’ off. The more ‘buts’ you laugh off the better off you will be. Once you have viewed all the consequences of a particular ‘but’ then get the positive opposite and look at, “What should or could be the consequences of _______________.

You may have to work your ‘but’ off for a while only because all those ‘buts’ did not get there overnight and some of them have been clinging on for quite some time. You have a lot of time and energy and life force tied up in those ‘buts’ so it will take some time to reclaim it. You could think that it would just be much easier to go about your day chanting positive affirmations and I would recommend that BUT you will just throwing wallpaper up to cover your butt, the crap is still there, lurking, underneath the surface. Our minds work like computers; they have been programmed over the course of our life time. In some cases we have done our own programming and sometimes it has been programmed by others; parents, teachers, peers, the media, etc. If your mind, your computer’s hard drive is full of ‘buts’ you have no space for positive affirmations. If your mind, your hard drive is 80% full of ‘buts’ the positive affirmation will again fail you because you are running on too many old programs and have too many ‘buts’ negating your being, doing and having. If you find yourself barring yourself from proceeding, it’s just another but coming to show itself. Handle it and keep going until the balance is tipped in your favor as you have practice the fine art of ‘but’ reduction.

Speaking from my own experience I am much less concerned at the thought of being a ‘but’ less wonder than I was in my teens. Keep in mind as you go that there is nothing the matter with a few well placed ‘buts’, they can come in handy when you make a conscious decision to slow things down for a legitimate reason. If you truly want to restrict the amount of something or not include certain people or experiences in your life there is nothing wrong with a well placed ‘but’. And we all experience times when the far better thing to do would be to ‘but out’. It is okay to keep a ‘but’ or two about, after all the word but does “indicate an exception”. The really neat thing about handling your “buts” is that the end product is that you can butt up to that which you wish to be close to, and, but away from that which you wish to distance yourself from.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! If you have read this far you didn't let your 'but' get in the way - as in I would have read it all but it was too long!