Stopping Your Success – Procrastination

 

Procrastination is an avoidance of a task that needs to be accomplished, people often avoid starting or completing an important task because of their negative emotion towards the task; guilt, anxiety, inadequacy or fear of the unknown.

 

Procrastination can stop you being successful

 

Many people avoid success, because they put obstacles in their own path, sabotaging their own efforts. This can include small task such as not paying bills on time, missing opportunities by not using a gift voucher by the use by date, leaving the Christmas shopping until the last minute.

 

You may be reading this and thinking “it’s not too bad leaving your shopping to the last minute or not using a gift voucher..” and I would add it’s not about missing just one opportunity, it’s about self-regulation which doesn’t mean procrastination is about time management, it means procrastinators is about your decision making strategy.

 

If you have a negative decision making strategy that you use throughout your personal life and your career, you will fail to gain any success

 A life Coach can help achieve success

A person with a positive decision making strategy will feel good about their decisions, starting and finishing task, learning from any mistakes and having a positive approach to starting new opportunities.

 

Procrastinators often say:

 

• “I will do it tomorrow”
• “this isn’t important at the moment”
• “I work best when I’m under pressure”

 

Even thought procrastinators use these statements all the time, they often wake up the next morning without wanting to start yesterday’s task, they still feel the task isn’t important and they don’t work well under pressure. Instead they look for distractions and more excuses.

 

Procrastination will believe:

 

• If they ignore a task, it will go away
• Lesser standards are acceptable
• They can complete large task in a small amount of time
• Substituting a lesser task for an important task is acceptable, saying to themselves that the lesser task also needed completing
• Minor delays are harmless – so I can repeat them
• Spending more time on part of the task is important then completing the whole task on time, or dramatising the commitment to the task rather then starting the task

 

Overcoming Procrastination:

 

• Make a list of what makes putting something off painful for you – why do you hate putting tasks off

• Make a list of the benefits of starting a task straight away, why does it feel good when you get things done quickly?

 

• ·         Put yourself in a positive state, remember a time when you felt good, when you were feeling really keen to get on with things
• ·         Do the task NOW if possible don’t put it off
• ·         Be honest with yourself – if you can only spend a certain amount of time on task, admit it, as this stops GUILT
• ·         Brain storm what you need to do and how you can achieve it
• ·         Set Goals and reward yourself when you achieve them
• ·         Prioritise task
• ·         Start with an easy part of the task
• ·         Break any task down into manageable steps, allowing yourself enough time to complete each step or stage
• ·         Address any problems as they arise – get help from others when needed
• ·         Be reasonable with yourself, don’t think all task can reach ‘perfection’
• ·         Continue to start task straight away, with everyday (and all) activities, as repetition will turn your new positive decision making strategy automatic

 

By following these steps, putting yourself in a positive mood, breaking down each task into easy to manage steps and starting with a small task straight away will help you to quickly overcome procrastination, once you use these strategy for all task in your life and career you will soon see the difference in your attitude and how others view you

 If you enjoyed reading this article you will also enjoy reading:

• Benefits of Life Coaching
• Overcoming the Fear of Failure
• 10 Goal Setting Questions

 

 

Overcoming the Fear of Failure

What stops most people moving forward with their life? The fear of failing – just the thought that you might make a mistake, you may get it wrong or you might fail, can stop people even trying something new. It’s not the fear of failure it’s the fear of criticism and rejection that people fear the most, which means if you didn’t fear the thought of criticism or rejection, what you can achieve is unlimited.  

Successful people make mistakes (like the rest of us) but they don’t see a mistake as a failure but see the mistake as feedback, a learning curve a chance to move forward.

Unsuccessful people limit themselves and only achieve a fraction of what they are capable of achieving, because they are scared that they will fail – they feel they will be criticized.

This article will help you overcome fear and to gain your goals.                                                

Life Coaching                                                                                             

How you view future events in your mind

When you think of trying something new you will make a visual representation of this event in your minds eye. This image, you will create will either be positive (you will see yourself being successful) or negative (you will imagine yourself failing) which will result in you FEELING positive or negative.

If your negative feelings are strong, you will often make the decision not to complete this task.

To overcome this, when you think of a negative image/future event in your minds eye, change the color of this image to black and white. If the image is more like a film, pause the film and make it into a stilled picture. Put a big frame around the picture and slowly move the image away from you, further and further away so the picture becomes smaller and smaller – how do you feel now?

As you change the submodalities of the image you will also change your emotional response to the image – you won’t feel negativity or fear. You will need to complete this exercise 2-3 times.

Without fear will you be more willing to “give it a go” and once you start trying new activities you will get new results.

NLP Life Coaching                                                                                                             

Keep Going

You need to be persistent, when you want to make a real change to your life. If you want to be successful you will need to look at different ways to achieve your goal. Some ideas will work and some wont, the trick here is to never give up and after each activity ask yourself what have I learnt from this experience? Remember if you carry on doing things in the same way you will get the same result.

An opportunity to learn.  

When making any change you will make mistakes, think of any failure as a learning experience. What did you learn from the experience that will help you in the future? How can you use this experience to improve yourself or your situation? What could I of done to prevent the mistake? What will you do differently next time? What has been good about making this mistake – what have I learnt?

If you enjoyed reading this article you will also enjoy reading:

• Achieve Your Career Goal  
• 10 Goal Setting Questions