WHY DO I PROCRASTINATE?

Ever wondered why you just can’t get yourself into a healthy routine, stick to a diet, or follow through on your plans, no matter how important they are?

You’re not alone – But your procrastination isn’t because youre lazy, unmotivated, too stress, too comfortable, uninspired or whatever other excuse you may come up with.

Nope, your procrastination and/or lack of motivation aren’t your fault at all..

When my clients fill in their registration form, they’re asked to circle the issues they’d most like to change. The two most frequent issues that come up among other things are Achieving Goals and Motivation.

When we talk about these two issues they tell me that even with all the right intentions and desires to improve their life, they really struggle with procrastination; putting things off, getting easily distracted, finding excuses to ‘do it tomorrow.’

In fact what also comes up is a fair amount of fear. People raise some concerns around why they hit a brick wall that reveal a degree of deep concern around procrastination.

Some of the most frequently asked concerns around procrastination are listed below, see if you can relate-

• Can Procrastination lead to addictions?
• Are depression and procrastination linked?
• Will I always procrastinate?
• Can procrastination be a disorder?
• Does procrastination cause stress?
• Is procrastination hereditary?
• Does procrastination cause anxiety?
• Can procrastination be due to abuse?
• Can anything heal procrastination?
• Does hypnosis help procrastination?
  
  But the most frequently asked question I get asked is..
• Does procrastination mean i’m lazy?

Well to start with, ‘being lazy’ can have plenty of up sides..

Have you heard the famous quote going around that says, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” This quote goes back to Frank B. Gilbreth Sr ..

He stumbled upon an interesting fact. He found that he could learn most from lazy men. In fact, he wrote books and became an expert in time efficiency for industry by studying how lazy people got things done!

“Most of the chance improvements in human motions that eliminate unnecessary movement and reduce fatigue have been hit upon, Gilbreth thinks, by men who were lazy—so lazy that every needless step counted.”

Next time someone accuses you of being lazy, just say, “I believe you mean i’m highly efficient.”

So going back to procrastination, yes, it can be perceived as lazy but it’s not.

Not from my experience as a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RRT) practitioner. When I regress my clients to the root cause for not feeling motivated, not taking action and procrastinating, we find there were childhood experiences that caused them to retreat.

Whether they developed the belief that they weren’t good enough or they feared being ridiculed, they experienced humiliation, or they didn’t want the pressure of fulfilling the expectations of their family/teachers, my clients were surprised to realise that what they had accepted and labelled as laziness, actually turned out to be the result of their protective brain directing them away from perceived, potential pain.

There are many interesting ways the mind processes pressure and creates defence mechanisms. It may for example create fears or a phobias, it may lead us to addictions or ill health, but it can just as easily lead us into procrastination.

The good news is, once your adult brain understands what you childhood brain experienced and what lead it to create certain blocks, procrastination, like most other issues, loses its potency.

Time and again I’ve heard it said that soon after having RTT, clients find it becomes instantly easier to push through old resistant ‘lazy’ thoughts and as the new programming takes place, their minds become clearer, more focused and more enthused about the bonuses of taking action in their life.

Many clients describe a ‘black wall’ that comes up whenever they decide to get on with a task or even follow through on something they enjoy, yet after RTT, they are able to just push through without resistance.

A tip or two for you when you want to overcome procrastination.

• Set out jobs to do and always get the most stressful or undesired ones first, then you have a great sense of achievement from early in the day and feel more motivated to get to the more enjoyable tasks.
• Break each task down into smaller parts where ever you can, doing 15 minutes of something is better than nothing.
• Try to catch your thought processes that lead to procrastination and nip them in the bud, stand up, shake it off, go get a drink of water while flooding your mind with how good it will feel when you get the job done.
• STOP calling yourself lazy or any of the other negative talk. If someone else called you lazy in an attempt to motivate you, would it work? As they say, you get more bees with sugar than with vinegar. Be kind to you!
  
  And next time you find yourself getting frustrated at your own procrastination, remember to give yourself a break, no pun intended!

If you are keen to stop procrastinating and want to feel motivated and focused around getting tasks done, contact Stacey here for a free 15 minute discovery call or send an email to hypnosisstacey@gmail.com