We’d all like to achieve greatness in life, wouldn’t we? Or at least some level of recognition for the efforts we put into the various aspects of our life.
Whether in our studies, careers, or physical development, we tend to feel gratified when our peers recognise our successes.
But if that’s true, why do we procrastinate and sometimes put things off entirely rather than just getting on with what needs to be done?
Why do we choose to dive into yet another Netflix binge rather than going to the gym, following your friends to the bar rather than finishing that course work, or just believing that we can ace that interview without preparing?
We make excuses like:
‘I can leave this until the last minute. I work better under pressure anyway.’ or ‘I can always go to the gym tomorrow. I’ll have more energy for it if I rest tonight’.
And yet somehow, you don’t make it the next day either.
I experienced procrastination most when having to make new business phone calls. I’d do absolutely anything to get out of it. I could spend hours getting just one more piece of information on the prospect. Then, finally, I’d tell myself,
‘I just need to know this one more thing about them, and that will mean I can call them.’
or
I’d check LinkedIn for the 100th time to make sure the person I was supposedly going to call was, in fact, the person I needed to speak to (which I already knew it was, and even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered).
So what causes us to self-sabotage and stall in this way?
Well, let’s start with the good news.
1) Your procrastination doesn’t mean you are inherently lazy.
2) There is nothing wrong with you.
And finally,
3) It is not just you. More than 84% of the UK population has experience in putting off those all-important must-do tasks.
What’s likely stopping you is fear.
And more specifically, fear, based on past experiences. i.e. you experienced rejection, and it was uncomfortable. Let’s say it then happens again. Your unconscious starts to pattern match, believing ‘new business calls = rejection’; therefore, let’s stay away from them to stay safe.
My friend and Mentor, Hazel Gale, explains this succinctly when she says:
‘Avoidance, or procrastination, is a fear response, and fear is functional. We are afraid of falling, for example, because we know that falling can hurt us. So the human mind has evolved to stimulate the unpleasant feeling of fear to keep us away from the edge.’
So, in other words, we procrastinate because we fear the outcome of what might happen. So – I used to put off making those New Business calls because I feared the ‘guaranteed’ rejection. And that would all contribute to my limiting belief of ‘I’m not good enough.’ So why bother making the call in the first place.
And yet we know that living in this fear and procrastinating has the opposite effect of allowing us to achieve that success and recognition we desire.
So how can you motivate yourself out of procrastinating?
The first step is awareness. And by this, I mean awareness of why we might be feeling resistance to doing something in the first place. So what event or series of events has contributed to you feeling that fear and discomfort.
Through this awareness, we can start to challenge our beliefs and behave differently.
Our beliefs guide our behaviour – so I believed that new business calls equalled rejection, and the resulting behaviour was that I wouldn’t do them.
Question the ‘why’ and the ‘what’. Why are you feeling this resistance, and what past events could be causing it? By knowing this, we can start reframing our past perspectives and, as a result, create better behaviour in the future.
Imagine if there was one thing you could teach yourself that would mean you could let go of that fear entirely, and it would clear the path for you to engage in what you need to be doing; what would you need to learn?
