How To Stop Procrastination ~ Serenity Wellness Pt 1/4 E111

Gather an understanding of areas that lead to procrastination, the impact it has, and an easy tool to get started on movement.

About the Spring Into Action Series:

Have you ever found yourself stuck in stagnation? Repeating loops of procrastination and avoidance in completing sometimes even the simplest of tasks?

Take part in this 4-week series to assist in getting out of the quicksand and springing into action. Movement creates movement. You do not have to feel motivated to begin, you just have to be willing to begin.

Break free from procrastination cycles.
Build an understanding of what pulls you in and find what makes you feel stuck there.
Cultivate mental and emotional awareness as you gather wellness tools to clear out old cycles.

Recalibrate and create a new way of living

This series will allow you to shift this mindset into your daily life far beyond the stretch of the month-long format.

Transcript

Hi there!

Welcome to Spring Into Action.

Over the next four weeks,

I'm going to be sharing some information to open up your awareness as you break down patterns that might be getting in your way and open up space for change.

Over the series of the next four weeks,

Each week I will be sharing different aspects of mental health awareness as well as a tool for you to implement through the week.

And in the process,

Over this time together,

By the end of the four weeks,

You'll be able to notice that you have created new habits in your life,

That those new habits bring more movement and maybe even allow time for some self-care.

So let's get started with today.

Today I'm going to talk to you about procrastination.

Many of us have experienced it in some form or another.

And you might find through this week that there's more than the areas that you might be mindfully aware of that you procrastinate.

But first,

Let's look a little bit at the different reasons why individuals procrastinate.

We're all different,

So we all have different methods and models of how we live life.

And just keep in mind,

The act of procrastination is the intentional avoidance of getting a task done.

So what would make us do that?

Why would we avoid doing the things that we need to do?

One reason is the fear of failure.

We can often automatically just be stuck in judgmental mind.

If you completed the Rewire to Love program,

You're quite familiar with your own judgments and how they impact you.

But if you did complete that,

You might have also noticed that you've dissolved a lot of those judgments.

But with judgment and judgmental mindset,

It can often lead to a fear of failure.

And in that fear of failure,

It will contribute to procrastination.

We might recognize that our judgment starts increasing,

Telling ourselves that we're not good enough,

We don't have the skills to do it or complete it,

Or that when we do,

No one's going to like it,

Or it will be full of mistakes.

We might even find that imposter syndrome coming in,

Believe it or not,

With procrastination.

Imposter syndrome is when we have this belief cycle that we're going to be found out,

Like someone's going to figure out that we don't really know what we're doing.

A lot of times people will have that in their jobs and careers.

So that could even contribute to the fear of failure.

As well as perfectionist mindset,

We might put such high expectations on ourselves that we have to just be perfect or we failed.

And there's no gray,

There's no black and white,

It's just very,

It must be perfect.

And when we get into that mindset,

Then we will procrastinate,

We'll avoid doing because we fear that we will fail.

Therefore,

We won't be perfect.

We might also,

Believe it or not,

Procrastinate because we fear success.

We might want something really badly.

We might have a desire for it,

We might have the creativity around it,

And we will still procrastinate about fear of success.

What if I succeed at this?

What else is that going to bring?

What other responsibilities then might be on my plate?

Or how will this impact my everyday living or expectations around what I have to get done in a day?

Manage my time,

Etc.

So we'll want something,

We'll even want to succeed at the something.

But the fear of succeeding will make us procrastinate and get in the way of that.

So fear of failure,

Fear of success,

Perfectionist mindset are all typical reasons that make us procrastinate.

Another area is related to impulse control and the strong attachment or desire for immediate gratification.

We live in a world,

A culture,

A mindset,

If you would,

Of immediate gratification.

We're moving,

Moving,

Moving,

Everything is going so fast,

And that can become a way of how we start living our life.

Even if we don't like the way it feels to be constantly moving and needing something of immediate gratification,

It can still lead to procrastination.

What if you have to do something,

But the something doesn't really bring this grand big result?

Or the result that you're looking for from completion is a few months away?

Procrastination.

I remember as a grad student when I would have to write papers,

I would really procrastinate.

I'd say,

Oh,

It's not due for like,

You know,

A couple months.

Well,

The couple months would come up pretty quickly.

And I love writing.

I love doing research.

It's just like a passion of something I enjoy.

I know that might sound strange to some people,

But I love doing research and reading.

And I have books and books falling off bookshelves.

I enjoy all of that stuff,

But I would still procrastinate.

I'd get it done and I do good at it when I did it,

Which is another thing.

You know,

We can even do good when we procrastinate,

Which then makes us keep procrastinating.

It's like,

Well,

I got it done.

I did good.

I must be doing OK with this.

But as you'll hear in a little bit,

Maybe it's really not the best,

Even if we're getting it done.

But we can still be attached,

As I'm getting off track,

To immediate gratification.

And with that,

It can lead to more and more procrastination.

And that impulse control that comes with it.

We might sit down and have an intention,

For example,

To do whatever it is that we're going to get started on doing.

And then,

Well,

Let me just read this one thing,

Or let me just check this thing out over here,

Or I'll just watch this show.

And then,

You know,

You're watching for hours or students will tell me they need a playlist to study,

Which is awesome.

That's great.

As a side note,

You want to try not to have music that has words if you use music for studying.

But anyway,

They'll want a playlist and it leads to procrastination to even study because they will spend like hours creating the playlist and then they're tired and don't want to study.

So just noticing how immediate gratification can get in our way,

But also how the impulse control,

Like we'll know that,

Well,

If I do this one thing,

This one thing is going to take me off track.

And then,

You know,

We lose the impulse control and we do that one thing.

That impulse control and immediate gratification in task completion and how it leads also into procrastination.

It's also important to be mindful that those interchanges there,

Immediate gratification and impulse control are also things that lead to addiction and addictions that contribute to procrastination.

Addiction mindsets.

So some of that,

The fear of failure,

Fear of success and some of the other things I am going to talk about here with you.

But we might have an addiction to a mindset around those things,

Worry or judgment,

Imposter syndrome.

We can kind of even be addicted to that mindset or addicted to substances of some sort.

Remember,

Addictions are all types of things,

Not just drugs or alcohol could be eating.

Lots of people are addicted to food as an avoidance or emotional number.

Like,

Let me just eat my emotions and I'll use food as a way to do it.

As an example,

Gambling,

Sex addiction,

Porn addiction,

Shopping addiction,

Phone addiction,

Social media.

I mean,

We can really get addicted to things to sidetrack ourselves.

And so that interchange of impulse control,

Immediate gratification combined with a bit of numbing out can lead to addiction and addictive type behaviors.

Which leads me into the next thing,

And that is the emotion avoidance that can contribute to procrastination.

That numbing out or not wanting to feel the emotions related to doing the task itself.

We lose sight of what it's going to feel like when we complete the task.

That gratification that will come,

The weight that's lifted off our shoulders,

The space that we leave free then in our mind.

Because we don't have to keep reminding ourselves of what we haven't completed yet or what we need to do.

But those things,

We lose sight of the afters and we might avoid or procrastinate because we don't want to feel or go through the emotional experience of the doing.

And on the front end of that,

We might also feel overwhelmed to even begin the task.

So emotional avoidance,

This fear of success,

Fear of failure,

Impulse control,

Immediate gratification,

And that emotional avoidance.

Slowing down,

Noticing which ones resonate for you personally.

Two others to be on the lookout for is,

Or one is related to,

A lot of people have a high attachment to motivation,

Meaning movement.

Yes,

Motivation is super helpful,

Right,

To get stuff done.

I mean,

Who doesn't like motivation to get things done?

And we can do things to maybe help motivate ourselves.

Self-talk,

Throwing on some great music.

But we can have a strong attachment to motivation being needed for movement.

And it's not.

We can create movement,

Even if we're a little resistant to the action,

And the movement itself will start to create some motivation,

Which you'll learn over the next few weeks together.

And then the last one to consider is,

At times we can have a,

Like,

We will look outside ourselves for accountability.

Accountability partners are great for some people.

For some people,

They're not.

And that's not really the point of this.

I mean,

You can get an accountability partner,

Not get an accountability partner.

The point of the procrastination piece of what I'm talking about here is,

If we are attached to a need to have an accountability person outside of ourselves,

We can easily procrastinate.

We can easily get stuck into bad habits.

I mentioned addiction just a little bit ago.

Anyone who's familiar with addiction,

Whether it's they personally experienced it,

They know someone who experienced it,

They work in the field of addiction,

You're not going to be able to clear and work through and heal an addiction pattern if you're solely looking for accountability outside of yourself.

No one is with you 24 hours except for you.

So training yourself in all capacities of life to recognize that you can be your own accountability partner,

It can be vital in just so many different areas.

So motivation is not required for movement.

Accountability can be within yourself.

And over this next week,

We're going to kind of leave a lot of that open so that you can see and notice in the tool I give you at the end here,

All the ways that you might procrastinate that you might not be aware of.

And the more you start practicing just the little ways,

The more it starts feeding into the other stuff.

Kind of like how I said,

Motivation,

Movement.

You start moving,

Motivation starts happening in a lot of cool ways.

Another thing to consider is that in all these different kind of things that I've laid out here,

Regardless of what area you might connect to that leads to your procrastination,

A lot of those areas will lead to overwhelm.

We will feel really overwhelmed with the idea of even getting anything done.

And some of the overwhelm might also be due to we might start writing lists.

Lists can be helpful in some ways.

They can also be non-helpful depending on how we list right.

I'm not going to talk about that this time together,

But I will be talking about this later on.

But we can feel overwhelmed because we have too big of a list or we're procrastinating because of any of those reasons,

The list then gets longer.

And we also might have that overwhelm or any of those other fears because we will overestimate the time it even takes to complete a task.

And so that's going to again pile on judgment or I can't do this or it's too much or I'm going to fail at this.

It's it all kind of can blend together.

So just being mindful of it can be really helpful.

And the ways that you might even feel overwhelmed going into it,

Because how these things then loop together when we're thinking about mental health.

We can certainly have some underlying anxiety and depression that can contribute to any of those areas there.

But think about the loop system of the whole body system.

And if we're procrastinating and more and more things aren't getting done and our pile is getting heavier and we've got the monkey mind going on all over the place.

Reminding us of all the stuff we haven't done and we're putting off and now we're calling ourselves names.

I mean,

Who's not going to feel depressed and anxious?

We're in that boxing ring with ourselves.

So it's this loop system that we get into with this as well,

Where it starts increasing our self-critical mind.

We start feeling defeat,

Despair,

Hopelessness,

Helplessness and more of a desire to numb out and avoid.

One last thing I think I want to cover in today's time together is another area that can really lead to procrastination is we won't have a connection to compassion towards our future self.

So in the moment where we're putting off things,

We won't acknowledge in self that we're creating more hardship or stress for ourselves later.

So our future self later might be three hours later,

Might be next week,

Next month,

But we lose sight of having compassion for our future self in our decision making to procrastinate and to avoid.

There's been several different research studies on this very thing that I'm talking about here.

I will give you maybe two examples if I can remember to.

I'm going to try to pull this from my mind real quick.

The one,

I don't remember where this was done,

But the researcher had individuals spend some time for a moment thinking of their future self when they were older and into retirement age.

I don't remember how much time,

Maybe just a brief amount of time that they did this.

It wasn't like months that they did this.

It was like a little research experiment here.

They spent a little bit of time reflecting or imagining,

I think it was like an imagery thing that they did,

Imagining their future self later into retirement.

Then they put money into their retirement accounts.

So individuals who had that bit of contemplation about their future self compared to individuals who did not and then both parties donated to their retirement,

The individuals who spent a bit of time contemplating about their future self donated more money to their retirement account.

Donated,

Contributed,

I guess would be the proper word.

So that would be one example.

Another example had to do with a researcher who had participants mix up some kind of concoction of stuff.

It was just like ketchup and for some reason ketchup is the only thing I remember,

But it was a bunch of stuff.

Like would you mix it together?

I don't,

Even if you like,

I don't eat ketchup,

But if you like ketchup,

You still,

It's not going to be tasty for you.

So this researcher had participants mix up a bunch of stuff.

And then they had a choice where they could eat all the stuff or drink it,

Whatever texture it was,

Themselves at that moment.

Or they could divide it where they had,

I think like two teaspoons of it now and then would have the rest in the future a few weeks later.

Or they could divide it or give it all to someone else,

Something like that.

So the individuals who were less connected to compassion towards their future self would pass it,

Most of it,

To the future self.

Individuals who were more connected to the future self,

I think they drank it all at the moment.

Missing that part of the,

But they did not give it to the future part.

They did not pass it on.

I don't think most of them did not give it to someone else.

So I think they just drank it or ate it or whatever in the moment.

Again,

There's many other research studies that look at that.

But those were just two examples of how spending some time noticing the impact of our decisions and what it has to do with long-term us can be very helpful.

I'll be talking much more about that next week as we continue to break this apart further.

But just for now,

Keep that part in mind.

And as you're thinking through all these things over the next week,

Just be mindful that procrastination can impact our health.

I mentioned about depression and anxiety.

And I also mentioned about how,

Or maybe I didn't,

How we can become addicted to procrastinating.

I don't think I mentioned that part when I mentioned about addiction.

But we can actually become addicted to procrastinating because of the adrenaline rush that it creates.

Especially individuals who have anxiety or PTSD.

Our body is very familiar with that feeling.

I myself have PTSD,

So I am quite familiar with the feeling in the body.

So our body can be really familiar with that feeling.

And then we seek out adrenaline in strange ways.

Sometimes for some people because of the adrenaline loop that it creates.

But the stress that this cycle creates on our body is not one that supports health.

It's spiking our adrenals,

Cortisol levels.

It impacts the serotonin and dopamine.

It also very much elevates the inflammation cycle in the body.

And the inflammation cycle in the body directly impacts our health.

If we can decrease inflammation cycle in the body,

You will notice a substantial increase in your health.

Among many other things.

I mean,

Think about it.

You know what you feel like when you procrastinate at the end.

You know the emotions that come with it.

The stress,

Maybe your depression,

Overwhelm,

Anxiety.

And the heart rate,

The mental fatigue,

Exhaustion nature of it.

The loops that we can get into.

I mean,

What about that sounds healthy,

Right?

But we do it.

We repeat,

Repeat,

Repeat.

Until we don't.

And that's what I'm here to help you with.

So that you don't have to keep repeating.

We're going to actually create a new cycle,

A new habit together.

But we're going to do it slow.

We're going to do it slow and steady so that your whole system cooperates and doesn't resist.

Again,

Motivation isn't required for movement.

But when we start creating movement that our whole body likes,

The motivation starts coming with it.

So over the next week,

The task is,

Number one,

Just to be mindful.

Think about those areas that I talked about today.

The different reasons why we may or may not procrastinate.

And notice what resonates for you personally.

The next task is,

For the next week,

Anything that takes under one minute to complete,

Complete it.

Washing that dish.

Hanging the jacket.

Putting the clothes in the laundry basket.

I mean,

Some of those things take like ten seconds and we still don't do it.

But allow yourself,

Anything that takes under a minute,

Complete it.

Go through the mail that you just got out of the mailbox.

Put trash in the trash can.

Clean the kitty litter,

If you have a cat.

I don't have a cat,

But I'm just trying to think of random things.

Empty the dishwasher.

Anything under a minute,

Let yourself complete it.

And notice while you do it,

Those things that you want to internally,

Automatically resist doing in the moment.

Allow yourself to still do it,

But just notice the resistance initially.

Notice the areas that are under a minute that you would desire to procrastinate on.

That's everything for today.

Thank you so much for joining me and I'm really excited to help you move into movement.

Namaste,

My friends.

Talk to you soon.

Reviews

This was nice and good. I like to hear your voice. It was very pleasant. Thanks for sharing these ideas too. Thank you so much teacher

Excellent. You touched on some points I had never thought of regarding procrastination. Some things make more sense now. Namaste Nicole! 🩵