Have you set yourself a goal and then abandoned it at the first obstacle? Do you have goals that would give you more satisfaction but can't find time to achieve them? Procrastination is a habit and for your ability to manifest and your effectiveness to shine you need to get rid of it (the habit). In this article, I teach you step by step, how to stop procrastinating to get more in your life with less effort and more satisfaction.
Step 1: Eliminate perfectionism
"It is better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly." Robert Schuller.
Procrastination is a habit originating from a belief within us.
Procrastination is also conduct. All behavior has a positive purpose even if the consequences are not desired. The purpose of procrastination is to avoid the fear of failure. In other words, procrastination is a negative way to protect ourselves through fear. I invite you to protect yourself in a more effective way and to support you. I invite you to protect yourself by generating a conversation within you that prompts you to act to achieve what you want.
Another purpose of procrastination behavior is the search for perfection, it seems like a positive purpose but in reality it means that we need to do the perfect things or we don't do them. And the truth is that, by our continually evolving human condition, perfection is only an ideal; For practical purposes of obtaining results, it is better to act in the moment with what we know, or the moment and the goal will pass.
We may not do the perfect things but we can do them pretty good and with continued doing we will do them better and more successfully.
"Walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking".
"The important thing about the trip is not the journey, nor the goal, the important thing in the trip is the walker, and even more so his satisfaction".
Application Exercise:
Develop the questions that disrupt the postponement:
What internal conversation supports your procrastination?
What new internal conversation would motivate you to DO what you say you want to do NOW?
What 3 things would you eliminate from your life to stop procrastinating?
What 3 benefits would you get if you ALREADY did what you have been putting off?
What price do you pay today for POSTPONING what you want?
"We can have reasons or we can have excuses, unfortunately to succeed we cannot have both."
Step 2: Modify your idea of "failure", change it to "training"
"Failure is just an interpretation that lives in our minds, if we choose to take it for granted it will become flesh in our lives."
"The main mark of a genius is not perfection, but originality to open new frontiers." Arthur Koestler.
Failure is just a different way of learning to do things well, if you fail and choose to see it as a training process, that will allow you to extract the beneficial lesson and experience to redefine your actions next time. There are precious gems of learning in every "mistake" or failure, only if you choose not to take it personally. How is that accomplished? Through a new angle of view of the situation of failure: that you have failed once does not mean that you "are" a failure, the person is not the behavior. You are much bigger and more transcendent than your supposed "mistakes".
You don't have to do everything perfect the first time without training: when you see a championship athlete, you see the tip of the iceberg, behind that mastery there are thousands of hours of practice, training, defeats, mistakes, failures; but above all a lot of optimism and objectivity to continue betting on life for himself.
Help tools:
How many things would you accomplish if you gave yourself permission to "fail" and not care the first time?
How many things would you accomplish if you allowed yourself to take each "failure" as a lesson?
How would you feel about yourself if you lost your fear of failure by driving yourself over there?
Would the simplest things be done to you knowing that deep down you can never fail?
Additional tip 1: From now on choose the word "training" instead of "failure".
Additional tip 2: Choose the phrase "genius training" instead of "I never do anything right";)
"Success reveals his secret to the one who knows how to be constant in his faith in himself."
"If you don't dare, who else will ?; Others are too busy thinking about their own fears to cheer you on for your accomplishments. ”
"May the source of your motivation be your own voice within you."
Step 3: Defining what you want: roadmap
If a ship does not know where it is going, will it reach a port?
If you don't know exactly what you want, do you think you can get it?
Many times the postponement occurs because there is no clear definition of what we want, why and how we will achieve it. If you answer and define these three aspects the motivation for your doing will appear and the delay will decrease.
Without clear and specific objectives, wishes are fleeting dreams.
Many times questions are the answer: Ask yourself:
What do I really want in this area of my life (work, studies, home, relationships, etc.)?
Because I want it?
How could I do it?
What first 3 steps would I have to take to get closer to what I want?
What 3 things would I have to stop doing to get closer to what I want?
The simple exercises in this section help you develop clarity. They are very simple and the contribution of self-discovery is invaluable.
By doing these exercises you get a lot with very little, it sounds good right?
Step 4: Differentiate being from doing
"Your ability to be a winner 100% of the time is based on giving up the notion that losing something is equivalent to being a loser." Wayne Dyer.
The conduct is not the person. There is a substantial difference between failing and being a failure.
Failure is doing
Failed refers to being
Many times we postpone doing something because we believe that if we cannot do it "we will be a failure" and it is not so, if things do not go as we want it will only be an experience not a truth about the being we are.
What 3 things would you allow yourself to do if you always chose to define yourself as a winner?
What 3 things prevent you from defining yourself as a winner: your friends, society, your family, matter more than you?
To define the BEING that you are, do you choose others to choose yourself?
To know more about yourself, do you ask others or do you search inside yourself?
What 3 things would you stop doing if you defined yourself as a winner?
We do according to how we are
But we can also be according to the way we act.
How do you feel better when you define yourself by what you do or who you are?
In what 3 ways would you feel better about who you are?
Step 5: Effective time management
Let's do the difficult immediately and take a little more time for the impossible. The time to do what you think is now is never too late to start.
Identify what excuses (internal conversations) you use to postpone.
Identify in which areas of your life you postpone the most and why.
Turn that excuse around with a new internal conversation.
Mini strategic plan to stop procrastinating:
1. Identify and write a list of the 5 most important things you usually put off.
2. Identify what resources you need to accomplish those 5 important things.
3. Assign them order of importance or priority
4. For each important thing you want to do, identify 3 steps.
5. Assign each of the 5 important things a specific time.
6. Take action! Remember that there is never a loss just learning.
7. Every day make lists with the most important things to do
8. Assign them exact time.
9. Incorporate them into your regular schedule
10. Mark them on your agenda.
** Having an agenda helps you keep an orderly control of the distribution of your time and is an effective system to evaluate where you spend your precious time.
** Having a schedule helps you to hit your targets, it is an effective way to visualize "in panoramic" the way you allocate your time to important things in your life.
For your success.
