Episode 030: What’s Underneath Your Procrastination
Today we are turning the problem of procrastination on its head. Easy strategies to help you work through the problem of procrastination.
+ Read the Transcript
So I'm excited about today's topic? I want to talk about what is underneath your procrastination because I think we get so caught up and beating ourselves up about procrastination and hammering ourselves. And I even recently had a client who came into her session with this heavy sigh and was just like, I just need to get motivated.
She went on to talk about how procrastination had become her M.O, and she was just great at procrastinating. And she just wanted to get past that she had this long list of stuff she wanted to accomplish, and her motivation was just short. And so it got me thinking about that.
This lament is a frequent one for my clients. Maybe you can relate. There's a lot you want to do; you desire to do, to accomplish in your life. And at the end of the day, you just feel lazy and stuck in a rut. So what are you supposed to do? You do what we all do.
You set a goal, you set up a reward system, and you hammer yourself into submission because somewhere, we've learned that the harder we are on ourselves, the more productive we will be. And the problem is that over time, that idea usually fails. We aren't more productive the harder we are on ourselves, because why would we be.
Goals are great. They're fantastic. They inspire us to do new things and accomplish tasks and live our dreams. So it isn't the goal that's the problem. It's our approach to the goal. So I'm going to go with an easy example, and I use this one a lot but exercising and working out is something almost all my clients want to add more to their life.
And so I'm going to do the goal of you want to walk 30 minutes every day. So that's the goal we're going to be talking about for the rest of this podcast. So here's rule number one, telling yourself how much you suck is not motivating.
So pay attention to how you talk to yourself about a goal. For example, when you set a goal to fix yourself, or because you're broken, it usually doesn't go over real well. But when compassion is mixed in there, that's when it gets a little better.
So the goal to walk 30 minutes a day is a great goal. Good for your health. It's good for your heart, but your motivation for doing it, you tell yourself, is because you're fat and you're out of shape, and you need to get in line. You're going to be old and decrepit. Your motivation is coming from a place of lack. It's not coming from a place of compassion.
So that's a hard message to get motivated around because telling yourself that you need to take a walk. So because you're fat and out of shape, you're just going to be like, okay, I'm already fat and out of shape. Why should I walk the message? It doesn't motivate you. It keeps you stuck. So changing a habit to walk every day for 30 minutes a day is a hard habit to change when the whole time you're telling yourself how fat and out of shape.
Yeah. What are you supposed to do? I have two questions. I want you to ask. One is to ask yourself, why is this goal important? And then I want you to dig for the answer. Your first answer will probably be a little negative because I'm fat and I'm out of shape, and walking 30 minutes a day is what they recommend will probably be your first step.
Then I want you to dig a little deeper. What's the more personal answer. How does this goal of walking 30 minutes a day fit your values? Because I want to play with my kids or grandkids and not be out of shape. Because we're headed to Disney World, and I want to enjoy my time and not worry about walking because I enjoy being outdoors.
And I miss exercise because I feel better when I move my body. When you dig deep, you unearth the real motivations that fit your values, and these motivations can then be used when you're full of excuses for not doing the work.
So the second question I want you to ask yourself is why you don't want to do this goal? This question is a little harder, and I know it sounds counterintuitive, but trust me again, you're going to dig deep. So an easy answer for this one is because I'm fat and I'm out of shape, and walking will be hard and painful at first, but I want you to keep going. So what else is underneath that?
And some answers might be because I'm afraid to have all that time just to let my thoughts. What if I fail? What if I don't feel any better? I don't want to get up early because I lack enough sleep already, and yeah, walking. That's just not enough. I need to be doing more than just walking. I need to be strength training, and I need to be running, and walking is just too easy.
So by asking why you don't want to do this goal, you start noticing your resistance. And when you pay attention to the resistance, you can productively deal with that. This step is often the part we miss, we diminish our resistance, and we simply try to will ourselves out of it. We tell ourselves I shouldn't feel any resistance because this is a great goal, but when resistance steps up, that's where grace and compassion come in.
When you can pay attention to the resistance, you can set goals that are accomplished based on where you are right now. So, for example, I'd say you resist waking up and immediately heading out the door to walk. So you decide you're going to walk during your lunch break, and then you decide it's getting hot.
I don't really like walking during my lunch break because I get too, I get too sweaty, and I don't want to be doing it. So you decide you're going to start walking after dinner every night, and when that happens and you get busy, and it gets darker at night, and you're like, oh, this isn't working.
I need to go back to maybe getting up first thing in the morning or maybe doing it at lunch now that it's getting cooler in the year. So paying attention to, when am I going to be doing this? When, what? Is the resistance that's popping up that's keeping me from doing it. And what pivotal changes do I need to make to keep the goal moving?
Maybe it's. I'm going to walk 15 minutes at lunch and 15 minutes before dinner. So I don't get super sweaty, and I have time to spend with the kids at home. Or, if you're afraid of letting your thoughts wander and you get anxious about all that, then pick out a few podcasts or books on tape that you can listen to that help reel that in and keep your brain occupied with something else.
So when we look at resistance, we can then create a goal that fits us. They aren't as narrow or fixed, and our goals have more expansiveness to them. The question also opens up to what lies underneath the goal. The fear of failure, the fear of success, but the fear of change is general resistance. So we can give ourselves more grace and compassion as we embark on a change.
That's the big thing we can say. Yes, I might fail. And the fear of change is okay. And I'm going to be, keep putting one foot in front of the other, despite the fact. So I do have a final reminder about these two questions. And when I say the word compassion for a lot of people, that brings up, oh my gosh. If I give myself compassion, I won't do it.
I'll just stay in bed. Yeah. Here's the thing that is misunderstood about compassion. It doesn't mean you always get a pass. The opposite of beating yourself up for not walking. Isn't not walking. The opposite is walking while honoring that it's uncomfortable and hard. Compassion means you honor where you are.
So you honor that you don't want to get up. You honor that you're afraid of failing. So talk to the voice in your head that says how much you suck, and you kindly ask it to move along. And when you do that, it makes getting up out of bed that much easier, because what is meeting you on the other side isn't some mean bully telling you how much you suck, but rather a loving, kind friend telling you, Hey, come on.
I know this is hard. But we can do it. We got this beating yourself into submission and calling it motivation will not work. It will lead to procrastination. The only way to change your behavior is to honor what comes up and move through it. And as I said to my client, you don't need more motivation. What you need is more compassion.
Now I would be remiss if I didn't give just a couple of easy things to move through that resistance. One of them is compassion, obviously the way I talked to myself, but it's also simple tricks. Like I, encourage myself to do the activity for five or 10 minutes. So I'll say, okay, you just need to walk for five minutes today, or you just need to roll out the yoga mat and maybe do some stretches, or you just need to make one phone call on your list of phone calls, or you just need to write for five minutes, just write anything for five minutes you want.
And so, giving myself that easy five to 10-minute entry point into whatever it is, I'm feeling resistance. Sometimes I just ride for five to 10 minutes, but sometimes it inspires me to keep going. The other tip I have is I get into analysis paralysis.
So I keep thinking what's the best way. What's the best way. And so, I never move forward. And so I have a rule that I'll tell myself, you have to be decisive today is a decisive day. And so I have to pick yes or no. I have to move forward. And if I don't know the answer, that's okay. That means I need to ask for it.
So I either need to make a decision. Yes or no, or I need to ask for help and how to best move forward. And so that gets me out of that analysis paralysis procrastination piece because a lot of times, what's keeping us, stuck there is the desire for perfectionism, and we don't want to ask for help. We don't want to admit we don't know.
And a lot of times, we are just giving ourselves permission. So I either have to say yes or no or ask for help, which makes that go away a lot easier. Okay. So I hope that was helpful and giving you some easy ways to move through procrastination because underneath procrastination is really where the good stuff is.
+ Weekly Ritual Challenge
One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.
This week's ritual: Engage in an Evening Ritual
Many people have a morning ritual, even if it is a simple as brush your teeth and make coffee. We do the same set of things every morning to wake up and start the day. But when we end the day, we expect to be able to brush our teeth and fall into bed. Which, for many of us, leads to waking up in the middle of the night unable to shut off our brains. Research has shown that if you engage in an evening ritual and prepare to fall asleep, the middle of the night wake up is less likely.