Procrastination, puts a stop to everything!

byacademyofspi

904 followers

Updated 9 years ago

This week seems to be procrastination week, at least for several of my clients. I have three clients who are in the middle of job hunting and moving upward in their career. I am coaching them through deep looks inside themself to haul out the garbage before they move. Isn't that the right thing to do - throw away the garbage when you move out?

It is not fun work to have to look back at yourself, the things you've done and how you have acted or reacted. It can often be embarrassing, and humiliating, but when that happens it means that you have grown and matured enough to know the difference. When you do look back and realize some things that you'd like to change, it means that you have learned from it, and the embarrassing situation will probably never repeat itself. Each of these clients had to first battle their own feelings of trying to avoid the assignment, before they actually got it done. They each came up with many creative ideas about why they could not do that assignment. None of the ideas were true or useful. They were all based solely on fear about looking back and seeing things that were not comfortable.

Every time this comes up for clients I have to chuckle, because I've seen it over and over again for many years, how we as humans will create some story in our heads about a project. The project goes from a decent task to climbing Mt. Everest in the blink of an eye. And the saddest thing is that we don't think anything of this massive take over of the brain and our lives that develops from letting unreasonable fear take over and run things. It turns out, for most people at least, that once the task is done they look back and are rather embarrassed about how their avoidance and fear that made out of nothing.

For most people this fear of a task or situation comes up without notice. Then it quickly becomes what they base their current life and opinions around. While stuck in that fear they can barely move in any direction. The fear will take over all aspects of life while this type of avoidance is going on anywhere within their life. It is a dangerous way of handling things if you intend to get anything done - ever. I really doubt anyone sets out to live in fear and derail their progress, but it sneaks in and takes over. Then, all of a sudden, your live is coming to a screeching stand still due to a fear that has no real basis in fact.

Avoidance like this is based on fear - fear of the unknown - fear of the known - fear of the assumed - fear of _____. Fill in the blank, everyone has it. It ruins lives. Fear and procrastination of a situation have lived on for years in some people, and the fear isn't even truth in most cases. This kind of fear can be so overwhelming that people do very crazy things to avoid whatever the situation is.

A team of psychologists tried to prove that people would blow things way out of proportion and then move on to avoidance and procrastination as their way of dealing with a situation they created. They set up an experiment where employees were asked to do a task with a deadline that was a month away. They were given plenty of time to get the task done over the course of the month. The tasks were things that the people were not familiar with, but they seemed to be rather labor intensive. Most of the employees were asked to go to the local storage facility and move all the contents in the company's storage shed to another storage facility. None had ever been to the company's storage shed or knew what the contents were.. They were told they could use a company truck.

No one got the job done immediately, the majority waited until the end of the month. Most rallied the troops and attacked it as a group since it seemed like such a big job. When they got to the company storage shed and opened the door there was only one small box that weighed hardly anything in the storage room.

All that stressing and worry over nothing! Each of the people who were involved said that they had worried about the task they were asked to do, they stressed over the unknown possibilities. They admitted to scheduling and rescheduling many times because it had such a long due-date, so they could put it off. They also admitted to being rather humiliated when they realized that the task was really nothing at all.

Prospective is everything, yet we often don't have all the facts before we start making declarative statements about a situation or task at hand. It's those declarations that are not based in fact that add up to a lot of garbage to be cleaned out. It is wise and necessary to investigate every situation or task before you judge it to be too big, or out of your comfort zone. Remember that the fear is only in your head and ever though it may sound difficult, it may end up being a great opportunity for learning. Fear and the need to avoid things that may cause pain end up keeping most people from many experiences because they are too afraid to even try.

One of the things I tell my clients is that whenever something seems scary ask yourself - What is the best that can happen, followed by: what is the worst that can happen? Usually the answer to those questions is able to change the prospective of the fears that are developing. Fear never looks at the bright side, the what is the best that can happen side. Being in fear only allows the worst-side to have a voice in the matter. A person must step out of fear in order to see that there any other possibility, it may work out for the best, and statistically the good side wins much more often than the bad side.

Why do most people choose to allow self judgement to say that there is only a possibility for the situation to be negative? Why do most people procrastinate? Why can't most people see the good possibilities along with the bad, even though they are there usually in equal quantity? Why do most people jump first to fear then have to work their way back to reasonable? The answer: Human Nature

However, humans can be trained out of that type of behavior. It takes an effort, but it is not very difficult. It starts by making a decision to change the way the internal thought process that leads to procrastination and fear is handled. Here's how to make procrastination a thing of the past for you:

Make the decision that you want to stop procrastinating and rushing to fear judgement.

Write down the declaration statement about that intent, post it in many places like: your car, your bathroom mirror, the kitchen, your desk at work, etc.

Read your life changing statement each time you see it over the next many weeks. Say it out loud where ever you can, it really makes a difference to hear yourself say it.

When you catch yourself procrastinating, or going to fear, think about your new declaration of intent. Then, think about the BEST thing that can happen from doing this task or handling the situation right away, and think of the worst that can happen. By using that order (best first) it will usually put things into a more positive prospective.

If after that you are still not motivated to move forward then you'll need to once again, restate you declaration statement.

If you still feel stuck after that, it is time to push yourself. Don't push out of guilt, or anything negative. Instead see this as a personal challenge, something that will feel great once it is complete, something that holds a lot of positive value and reward. When a human forces their brain to see the positive side it usually stimulates the positive to come into focus. Most people spend so much time focusing on the negative that they aren't even able to recognize that positive is possible without an effort.

Please, do not let procrastination hold you back from completing anything anymore. Especially here at Wealthy Affiliates. There is enough information here at WA that you can build a decent website and find a product to affiliate with in fairly short order. The only thing holding you back from making money is fear. Fear of what??? It is probably a self created fear that has very little to do with reality. So do what it takes to make it disappear, and get to work to meet your goals.

Changing the way you allow yourself to view situations can change your whole life, it is well worth the effort to change.

Thanks for reading this, I hope it will help you kick your own butt and get things done.

-Wendy Mae, Ph.D.
Academy of Spirit