A Way to Stop Procrastinating
(By being kind and gentle with yourself.)
Are you being mean to yourself?
Do you believe that being hard on yourself will get you what you want in life? If you’re not sure, let’s check in. Have you done any of these things lately?
- Been unhappy with yourself when you look back on your day and how you spent your time,
- Called yourself lazy,
- Had a stern talk with yourself on how you’ve been procrastinating, yet again.
Let's slow this down.
If you’re using this strategy, you can slow it down and see if it’s working for you by using the Coaching Framework. To start, fill in the blanks below, starting with that thing you’re saying to yourself. Then go to the next step and really notice your body and how it makes you feel when you say it. What’s the action that follows, and the result you’re creating?
What you’re saying to yourself:
How it makes you feel:
The action you’re inspired to take:
The results you’re creating:
Here's what might be happening:
I took the liberty of filling in the blanks (based on my own experience!)
What you’re saying to yourself: “You’re such a procrastinator!”
How it makes you feel: tense, closed off from others, ashamed
The action you’re inspired to take: avoid, freeze, worry, beat myself up some more
The results you’re creating: more procrastination
Here's a better way.
Start with your feelings. They’re the most important things because we really only do things because of how we want to feel.
- Remember a time when you felt inspired and motivated. How did it feel in your body?
- lit up?
- energized?
- quietly confident?
- How do you feel when you’re doing your best work?
- calm?
- relaxed?
- inspired?
- moderately stressed by a deadline?
- How do you feel when you’re at your best?
- when you used a skill you have to help someone else
- when you complete a tough task
- when you did what you said you were going to do, even though it wasn’t easy.
Notice what happens when you feel this way.
Get into that feeling state, then turn to what was stressing you out.
Maybe a small, doable step jumps into your mind. Or, perhaps something that seemed big and impossible suddenly seems doable. Or, you might have the idea to make a complete list of all the steps and cross them off as you do them because seeing all those check marks give you a feeling of accomplishment. Sometimes, you get excited thinking of someone you could talk to or ask a question of.
Getting into a calm, relaxed state opens you up. Ideas start pinging. Instead of seeing one way out, you see many. Some of them actually might be fun!
Calm, fun, inspired feelings lead to a bunch of ideas; closed, tense, stressed feelings lead to limited ideas with only one or two ways forward, neither of which seem doable or fun.
The Future You Exercise
Another way is to feel great is to use the Future You exercise. Imagine yourself three years into the future where everything has been resolved. Really imagine it, and then let Present Day you borrow those feelings from Future You. See if that unlocks that feeling of being stuck.
I created a Future You guided meditation to get you started. This is a great exercise to get into creator space that is very accessible and powerful. You can find it here. It’s part of my Get Unstuck free resource library.
The Coaching Framework Brings Clarity
The coaching framework makes visible the unconscious workings of your brain. If you have a mystery in your life, get out a pen and some paper and get curious — is the thought I’m thinking, the story I’m telling myself helping me get where I want to go? Or, is it getting in the way?
In this case, we went right to the feelings. Another way is to say nice things to yourself:
- I’ve got this.
- I don’t know how. Yet.
- I’m learning how to solve this type of problem. The more I do it, the better I’ll get.
- I wonder how I could make planning my day fun.
- If I was planning a day for someone else, would I force them to sit for hours and hours without help, feeling stressed? Or would I plan some breaks? Some healthy food? A workout? Some yoga?
- If I knew the answer before I started, life would be boring.
