Meditation For Procrastination & AD(H)D
This audio was recorded during a live event on Insight Timer about Procrastination and AD(H)D. The track involves a quick meditation and tools which help with procrastination. There might be some background noise. A lot of questions come in about procrastination and AD(H)D - People with AD(H)D are more prone to procrastination (Ferrari & Sanders, 2006) and emotion regulation skills & self-esteem improvements with AD(H)D should improve procrastinating behaviour (Bodalski et al., 2022)
Transcript
So when you are ready,
I'm going to invite you to sit with a straight spine,
If you're not driving.
You can open your hands on your lap and make sure your feet are touching the floor.
You can close your eyes if you haven't done so already.
And I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath in through the nose and then hold it for a couple of seconds.
And then you breathe out through pursed lips longer than you inhale.
And make sure you fold over a little at the end of your out breath to completely empty your lungs.
So you can breathe in,
Hold it and just let go.
Breathe in,
Hold it on the top and breathe out through pursed lips.
Just let that go.
Breathe in,
Hold it and let your expectations go.
Final big one,
Breath in.
Hold it,
Hold it,
Hold it,
Hold it.
And let that negativity go.
Return to your natural breath.
Let's go into that body a little bit more.
And ask yourself what emotions am I experiencing?
And it might be helpful to state the emotion out loud and give it a number from one to ten.
For example,
Anger five,
Fear seven.
And if it are multiple emotions that's okay.
Or if it's difficult to trace,
Focus on your breath and ask yourself what emotions am I experiencing right now?
And what you can do is to actually place a hand on the emotion which you feel more than the other ones and trace it in your body.
This might be difficult,
But that's okay.
And breathe through that.
You don't need to push it away,
Just feel it.
Easier said than done.
And now I'm going to ask you for the next step.
And that is becoming aware of your excuses.
So can you notice when you have an intention and don't follow it through?
Can you notice and record what your thoughts and feelings were about the task and your excuses?
For example,
You wanted to do finances,
But you felt resistance,
Anger,
Frustration.
And you thought,
I can do that tomorrow,
I'm in no rush.
But also focus on the feeling.
So awareness is the first step that was changed,
So think of your excuses and your feelings when you procrastinate.
Maybe you will recognize yourself in the following.
I will do it tomorrow.
I only work well under pressure.
I simply don't have enough time to work on it.
It's too difficult.
I cannot do it.
I'm too tired,
Angry,
Sad or stressed.
Remember to breathe and can you think of any other excuses?
Well done.
And remember,
This is the first step and sometimes they seem bigger than they are.
Sometimes the task seems bigger than it actually is.
Or you are dreading a feeling which is actually less than it actually is.
So if you think about this task and you having those excuses,
What would a loving friend say to you?
Maybe they will say something like,
Once you do it,
It doesn't seem so bad or everything will be okay.
One year from now you are going to think,
Oh it wasn't that bad.
So what would your friend say more about you and the situation when you are procrastinating?
And would your friend make any suggestions?
Would they embody feelings of unconditional understanding and compassion?
And can you now show that compassion to yourself?
Can you place your hands on your heart and stay out loud with me?
I am learning about my procrastinating behavior.
I am aware of my excuses.
I will set intentions to work against those excuses.
I am doing my best.
I will focus on compassion and self esteem.
I am taking this time apart from me.
I am improving myself.
And can you now thank yourself for taking this time apart?
Can you thank the other meditators here with you who are also working on themselves?
And you can let go and have another quick check in.
How am I feeling?
Have my emotions changed?
And you can move around,
Open your eyes if you haven't done so already and come back.
Welcome back.
And please share how that experience was for you.
Because what we've done and also research shows,
Compassion is key.
It makes you more resilient.
And also the thing with procrastinating behavior,
And if you are curious to work on this particular part,
It's for example when you have excuses,
You might even talk badly about yourself.
It might even be your inner critic.
Indeed I read I felt so much guilt.
And that could be,
And I don't know if this is in your case,
But for me it was a lot of inner critic work.
So I also needed to do visualizations with my inner critic.
And that is why one step is become aware of course of your behavior and your excuses.
And then set intentions.
But those intentions should be from a compassionate adult healthy voice and not from your inner critic.
Not of you should know better,
You should walk,
No no no shoulds.
It could be something like,
And I didn't talk about this in detail,
But this is a take home message hopefully.
It could be something like it would be lovely if I could or I would like to work on.
That sounds much better than I should and I eh eh.
So hopefully that's a take home message.
Work on your excuses but also your intention setting and your goal setting.
And the other part is indeed a compassionate friend.
Compassion for yourself is very important,
But it could also be helpful to have a compassionate friend.
If you have an actual friend in your life,
There are also now studies where they are using accountability buddies.
In fact I am actually also an accountability buddy because I work with students during my day time job with ADHD and people with different symptoms.
And it really helps that I'm there when they do the work.
So I'm not the one that is like you didn't do your work.
No we celebrate when you've done the work.
So it's really important to perhaps find an accountability buddy,
Not per se that oh you should remind me that I should do the work.
No celebrate the work.
So yeah I've shared a lot in the beginning for those who joined in later.
I am a qualitative researcher.
I'm a lecturer.
I help students with procrastinating behaviour,
But mostly important.
I am a former,
Really big former procrastinator.
That's why I combined my research background with my love for meditation to share here with you.
I've shared a couple of research details beforehand and that's why I really appreciate donations.
You know this is a hobby of mine and with your donations I can actually expand and hopefully help more people.
This is not my day time job,
So with your donations I can hopefully help more people and do more and make better content as well.
I see the heart and gratitude.
Thank you so much.
And I want to close off with a couple of things and I always try to say this and sometimes you can hear me say it,
But please be mindful of your words.
Try to avoid labeling yourself as the procrastinator because then it becomes this negative loop.
You know then you give yourself unspoken permission to actually act as a person worthy of that label.
If you tell it like it is,
Procrastinating behaviour,
You don't become the whole identity of a procrastinator.
And another thing is work on intention setting.
That's one thing I would suggest and compassion,
Compassion,
Compassion,
Compassion.
I also talked a little bit about this and that is that we make a task bigger in our head,
But this is also with emotion.
So those emotions you did in the beginning,
That check in,
Is part of emotional regulation,
Which is key to be procrastinating behaviour.
But if you would compare that emotion of being afraid of a task and then actually doing the task which you're afraid of and then feeling that emotion,
That's probably even lower than the actual one.
Weird,
Right?
So we're doing something to prevent the feeling,
Which is probably less than we're actually,
Yeah,
I don't know why we're wired like this,
But we do it.
Thank you John for the donation,
It really helps me.
And indeed worry,
Worry or anxiety as you might call it.
I think a big emotion with procrastinating behaviour,
At least for me,
Fear.
It was all fear based.
It really was.
Yeah,
So that's why emotional regulation is key,
Is key.
Yeah,
Exactly Jay,
There are multiple components here.
It's indeed kindness,
Compassion,
But also feelings.
It's not the one thing fixed.
It's not a quick fix also,
It's not a quick fix.
I'm about to close off,
Almost over 30 minutes.
But people thank you for being here and hopefully I've helped someone today.
If you are curious,
I have so much more on my Inside Timer profile.
And I also have a 10 day course on Inside Timer to beat procrastinating behaviour.
I talk more in detail and I offer multiple techniques and meditation practices.
So you can follow me on Inside Time.
And I see the arts again,
Thank you so much.
Hopefully you have a lovely day or night ahead.
And maybe I will see you in another life.
Thank you,
Another life event.
Thank you,
Bye.
Bye.
Thank you,
Namaste.
Bye,
Bye.
