Tuesday Tip

Seven Steps to Handle Procrastination

When you find yourself procrastinating something that you are inevitably bound to do (like laundry, marketing your business or writing your book), remember this:

The actual action is never as bad.

• It will not be as hard as you are making it to be while you are engaging in procrastinating.
• It never takes as long as you make it to take in your dread-creating mental scenarios.
• It will not feel as bad as you are making it to be now; and if it does, there’s a reason you must do it and not doing it is making you feel TWICE that bad, so get it over with!

Here’s a process that helps:

STEP 1:

Remind yourself that procrastination magnifies the negative and multiplies the dread, prolonging the pain. Repeat the three statements above. In other words, face the fact that you are really making it worse than it truly is.

STEP 2:

Accept the emotions that you want to avoid. Does this scare you? Does it stresses you out? Does it place you face-to-face with an old, dreaded conflict? Accept it. Accept your feelings and yourself having these feelings. Acceptance alleviates the avoidance stressors that are making you procrastinate.

STEP 3:

Accept also that you WILL do it. (Otherwise you would not be procrastinating, but cancelling.) Therefore it is a matter of time. Do you prefer to choose the best time for YOU? Or do you prefer to wait until the very last minute, when you may not be able to choose the environment or handle any problem? Make the choice.

STEP 4:

Realize that you are making a choice. Procrastination is NOT the avoidance of choice. It is making a choice to keep wallowing in your misery and then to respond at the very last minute, or even later; compounding that problem with your current dread.

STEP 5:

Now focus on how you will feel once this is over with, once you are free of that weight on your back.

STEP 6:

Finally, offer yourself a reward and concentrate on the feeling of freedom after getting it done and the good feeling of the reward until you are looking forward to these.

STEP 7:

Now you are ready to go for it. Do it!

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