Month: November 2022

Procrastination…..

This is something that so many people tell me that they want to reduce or eliminate. In fact, my own son had this cute little sign that his girlfriend gave him in high school, and it says ‘I put the pro in procrastinate’. We like to joke about it.

It’s something that everybody wants – to lose 10 pounds and stop procrastinating, right? Today I want to talk to you about an unusual way to achieve this. 

We’re going to dial it down to the root cause: fear. Carl Jung said “where your fear is, there is your task”. You can read on, or watch the video.

What is behind procrastination?

Uncertainty, or a lack of clarity. Behind that lack of clarity is usually fear. Fear catapults us into action, and it also stops us in our tracks. Fear is based in the reptilian brain, not the cerebral cortex. We can’t talk ourselves out of fear. In a battle, your reptilian brain, your brain stem, will always win because the brain really wants you to stay alive. That’s why you can’t “logic” yourself out of something that’s scaring you to death. 

But there are things you can do. You can move the needle forward slowly so that your reptilian brain doesn’t go to ‘alert, alert, alert, you’re going to die!’ How about some real examples?  I was thinking back into certain situations where I was procrastinating- based on fear. 

First of all, when you notice yourself procrastinating, you really want to ask what it’s all about. Don’t beat yourself up and say “Oh my God, there I go again, procrastinating”. Rather, ask yourself,  “what is it all about?”  I remember a couple of years ago, I really procrastinated about going on ‘Obamacare’ and it was because I had this fear that I couldn’t afford the health insurance that I wanted and that I’d be out on the street and that my chronically ill son would not be able to be taken care of. That’s a pretty big fear.  And what I did was I did it anyway. I was scared to death, absolutely frightened beyond belief, but I did it. And this year in the same way, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but the difference is that I’ve done some deep work and I know that I will figure myself out. I will apply and we’ll see if we get health insurance; we’ll see what happens. We might get rejected, but I know that I’m not going to die. I know that it’ll all work out because I’ve experienced it working out. 

What about when you haven’t experienced it working out? That’s pretty scary. The only thing you have is what hasn’t worked out before – so most of the time we procrastinate. We don’t make decisions, and we fear the future because the only truth we have is the past, which hasn’t worked out. So, we say “well shoot, if it hasn’t worked out before, whatever, I want this, but I don’t ever believe it’s going to come because it hasn’t worked out in the past, and that’s my only proof.” Then it doesn’t work out. Then we prove ourselves right, because it hasn’t worked out before.  So, I’m inviting you to  use my example until you have “proof” of your own success.

The other example where I was procrastinating  was buying a house. I was scared to death to buy a house. I thought I couldn’t afford it. What about if something went wrong, who’s going to help me? And when I made the decision to buy that house, the right things came together. The DECISION (in the face of fear…not because the fear went away) allowed things to fall into place.

So, borrow my courage and know that it’s true. You can achieve things that you don’t really think you can. The things you are procrastinating about.

I’ve got you. Reach out!

I was musing about some of my current clients and their challenges with hitting their Dream Goals and “managing their time.” Read on and see what may apply to you (or watch the video)

Are you a high performer? 

Are you kind of ‘go’ like all of the time?

You might call yourself ‘type A’ – you get a lot done.  You’ve got a lot going on and there’s more.  Maybe you have some passion projects: missions that you want to achieve, but you get a lot done and actually you secretly fear that if you were to figure out how to make time in your day to do that ‘big thing’ that you might become burned out or fear being burned out. And you probably fear that with good reason. It’s because you know how hard you’ve worked over the years to achieve the level of success you’ve got today.

And how could you possibly do it (get to your dream mission)? You say, “well, I just need better time management. I’m good, but boy, I better need better time management”. Well, I’m going to take issue with this because I actually don’t completely believe that that’s all you need. 

Let me tell you a story about some people that I’ve been working with that are in that situation. They want to do these passion projects. They have successful businesses and they want to get to their next level. And I am taking that time management thinking and turning it on its head.  I am going to guess about you. I’m going to guess that you and I are “one of those people”.  The Achievers. Here is the advice. What you have to do is slow down to speed up. I know you’ve heard it before and you think, ‘yeah, yeah, no, no’ – so bear with me.  

The fact that you need to do something different is the reason why you might be resisting the idea that you need to slow down. So if you say “yes, I want to do something different, and I am 100% committed to that, I rate as a 10/10  to go to my next level!” Well, here’s what happens – I am working with people right now, they’re in this situation and when we talk about slowing down, discerning what we really want, going deep, allowing stillness, and… it becomes very uncomfortable. And when things become uncomfortable, we start telling ourselves stories.

Stories like “this is not for me, this doesn’t work for me. I can’t meditate, I can’t sit in stillness, I just can’t. I have to keep going. It works for me. It’s always worked for me before”. And that’s what we tell ourselves. My response to this is:

1. You did say you were a 10/10 in wanting something different that you haven’t been able to get to – and you probably know in the back of your mind that some version of this stillness, some version of this slowing down is actually good for you. But yet doing the thing is so jarring because you’ve been going, going, going for so long.  What is uncomfortable is being in the discomfort of quiet. It’s like jumping in a bucket of cold water. It’s shocking to the system and your nervous system.  Your sympathetic nervous system is saying, “no, this isn’t safe.  We have got to go back to where we’re just really busy. This quietness is not okay!” – but it actually is – so know that you’re smarter than your nervous system in this case. 
2. Before, your monkey mind was way up here (your mind). If you just go down to here (your heart), that’s progress. What we high performers do is we expect if we are here (head) that the only piece that’s okay is if we go down here (heart). Well, that’s not true because if you just keep notching it down, eventually your sympathetic nervous system will become more tuned in with stillness. And the more stillness you then have, the more open you become to those possibilities that are literally right in front of you. Because all of our possibilities are literally right in front of us; most of the time we just don’t see them.

There’s helpers around us, there’s angels around us. My glasses, I may have told you before, were lost for a year – and they were right underneath my recliner all that time.  There I was- laying on my yoga mat -and all I had to do was look over in a moment of stillness and see them. So when we’re so busy, we simply don’t see what is right in front of us. You can outsmart your sympathetic nervous system. Accept that going from 100 to 99 is progress and is just okay. It is totally okay. And know that the more you do it, the more you practice, you really and truly will find possibilities beyond your wildest dreams so that you don’t have to be under that constant pressure to do more, to perform more, to create and to produce. 

Because here’s the truth. 

When you have that big mission, when you allow yourself to slow down enough to feel into that big mission, what’ll happen is you will start getting motivated right off off the charts and you won’t feel burned out because you will be so filled up by that mission that it will fuel you in such a way that you won’t feel burned out.

So let me know what you think of this (comment below) and how you might try to practice 

slowing down

just 

a little 

bit. 

I have been asked to do a webinar on effective self-management, which will be happening on November 14th at 1:00 PM EST through www.lorman.com. You may be wondering…who cares if you manage yourself effectively, right? It’s something that nobody really thinks about. You get up in the morning, you do your routine, whatever that is. Maybe you exercise, maybe you have your coffee, maybe you do both of those things. Maybe you run out the door, maybe you read a book, maybe you bring your kids to school and you’re just kind of doing your thing, right? So what you’re probably not thinking about is “wow, if I manage myself a little more effectively, I could get more of what I want.” Because the truth of the matter is most people actually don’t think about what they want, they’re moving through life, doing the best they can, or maybe not even doing the best they can. They’re just doing something. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about what it is and why it matters. And if you want to learn more about this, in much more detail, come along to the webinar.

Before we get started, let’s address decisions. Decisions are a big deal. Lots of times, my clients tell me that they experience ‘analysis paralysis’. Those same people typically pride themselves on being analysts. Isn’t that interesting? Those same people will say “Well, all my analysis has brought me to this success I see right now”. Isn’t that interesting?  I ask, I wonder… at what cost? For example, are you really stressed out? Are you really living the life you want? Are you really managing yourself effectively? Or are you running from thing to thing to thing…trying to keep up with that influx that’s coming at you all the time. Could you manage yourself differently, proactively make decisions more quickly and effectively?

Lots of people don’t want to make decisions unless they are analyzed in duplicate, triplicate, quadruple.  And every decision means you must say no to something else. That can be really scary because most of the time people don’t want to say no to something else. They just want to fit more in. And when they try to fit in more, then they get overwhelmed and overloaded and they think they need better time management, which is true. But you can’t manage clutter, you can’t organize clutter, and you can’t manage something that is too much for you.

So then what?

So then it’s better to subtract. Get really good at managing what you’re doing FIRST, and THEN add more on. Every decision that you make  means you say no to something else, and then every decision you make actually gets you closer to what you want because as you make decisions and you get that momentum, what happens is you’ll actually start to say “no” when it’s not working, because your body and your mind will start getting used to this idea of making decisions and therefore making it better. The webinar is highly correlated to my Productivity Success Cake.  In that webinar we will  nail down what you really want and why and then go through, layer by layer, how to tap into each layer in a way that will then harken back to what it is you said you wanted. Now this process, while you may have gone through it before, is a process that you’re wise to go through over and over again. And the reason that it’s so helpful to go through over and over again is that we get better at managing ourselves. And just like a mountain (if you’ve ever climbed a mountain) you get to that first peak and you think… boy, oh boy, that was big!  You sit down, you have a snack, have some water, rest, and then you look and there’s another peak. Now you can choose to go back down the mountain. You don’t need to do that other peak that time, but you can also choose to say “Hmm, yeah, you know what? I think I’m up for that next peak” and it’s a continual improvement process. Your self management is best served by always going to your next level. Yes, it’s important to stop and celebrate, like the top of the Productivity Success Cake. You want to celebrate, you want to enjoy and digest – and then you’ll come to that moment of “All right, I’m ready for that next level.”

I have several clients, for example, who’ve taken the Productivity Success Cake group coaching course multiple times. And every single time what happens is they get new ideas, they go to their next level, they become even better at whatever it is.  Sometimes they’ve fallen off the wagon and their health layer is a little unstable – so it gives you that opportunity to come back. So, if you feel that before the end of the year, you really want to look at your self management and that you want to give that your attention, then I’d say consider it and take a look at the details and go from there.

And please let me know what piece of self-management you would like to work on before the end of the year – because you still have close to 60 days left.

Comment below and let me know!

Or you can email me at carol@eps-time.com.